


Earthbent!

by elanor_pam



Series: Cultstuck [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanor_pam/pseuds/elanor_pam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lower than the lowest, higher than the highest. Scream of the Sufferer echoing through time, his Blood now Returned to redeem our crime. Signless Reborn, the Carrier of Blood. Grubloaf of Life, fill our starving souls. (...) Oh He Whose Blood Runs Purest, Descendant of Suffering! Rekindle the Righteous Rage, burn our shameful world. Oh Shadow's Serene, Pink Moon's Moirail, Night of the world! (...) Oh, Grace of Blood, Comforter of the Weeping!</p><p>Be safe in the world the Empire knows not, while we pray that it is not found in the meantime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. > Days in the past (but not many...)

\-- turntechGodhead  [TG] began pestering ghostyTrickster  [GT] at 2009-10-25 - 23:23 --

TG: dude   
TG: fuck   
TG: im alive   
TG: i am   
TG: guess whos alive hint its me   
TG: i exist and i am fucking back   
TG: what day is today i dont even remember its been forever   
GT: it was just a weekend you big horse butt!   
TG: no im serious my computer clock is out of whack it says 01/01/2005 that cant be right   
GT: it's the 25th.   
TG: oh good i was wondering   
TG: the question now is why my computer thinks its 2005 when its not even a year old   
TG: this is some twilight zone bullshit right there   
GT : maybe it was your bro fucking with your computer settings for some stupid irony puppet-rapper bullshit reason.   
TG: yeah maybe   
TG: getting back at me for the soy sauce with some subtle passive-agressive date-changing    
TG: rose would be so proud   
GT: i dunno man, that sounds fucked up.   
TG: yeah because it is   
TG: which is why ill go and talk to him about it man to man eye to eye   
TG: as soon as im finished chilling my brain and my legs   
GT: oh yeah, you must be tired!   
GT: how was your trip?   
TG: oh man it was stupid and dumb can we not talk about it   
TG: running errands on the ass end of the universe   
GT: sounds kind of stupidly far for a camping trip.   
TG: whatever i dont care   
TG: the darkness beyond the stars makes for a shitty camping field all bugs and mosquitoes and deudly radiation   
TG: nice view though   
GT: also who the hell camps in reach of a grocery store, something's suspicious about your story.   
TG: thats how we camp in texas   
TG: okay fuck that shit lets talk about something else   
TG: like those dumbasses who were giving you a hard time you havent told me what came of it and you sound grumpy as shit   
GT: oh haha that's right!   
TG: you said you were going to get back at them are you still gonna do that because i think its a terrible plan   
GT: geeze what a worrywart!   
GT: shouldn't you be encouraging my revenge on the stupid evil bullies?   
GT: dave, i don't know you anymore.   
TG: yeah i should if i were a character in some dumb disney channel sitcom all sitting together under a yellow lamp in an abandoned hideout macauley calkin style designing a giant rube goldberg pie thrower machine to be put together at school overnight and activated in the most dramatically appropriate moment possible   
TG: but im not so i think your prank idea is utterly retarded and the thought of you going through with it gives me secondhand embarrassment   
GT: yeah well the joke's on you because it's already done and it worked beautifully!   
TG: oh fuck no   
GT: i'm serious, it went much better than even my wildest projections.   
GT: so much better, you have no idea.   
TG: when did this happen   
TG: do i want to know i dont think i do   
GT: yes you do.   
GT: i scrapped the bucket trap because there was a considerable possibility it would fall on someone's head and kill them, like in carrie.   
TG: thank god for small favors   
TG: you narrowly avoided a psychic bloodbath there   
GT: i was super psyched over the flour balloons, but then i read in that terry pratchet book that flour blows up and that seemed hells of unsafe...   
GT: and i couldn't figure out how to set up the hose and the fire extinguisher, so.   
GT: on friday morning i put gouache in some party balloons and filled them at school and tagged the shit out of them during recess.    
TG: that sounds like it would piss them off even harder   
GT: which was why i told everyone in the teachers' lounge i was going to do it beforehand.   
GT: FLAWLESS EXECUTION.   
TG: wait what that makes no fucking sense   
TG: you say those fuckers got away with everything they did and that your teacher was blatantly biased so you went and   
TG: okay i give up whats your angle here   
GT: my angle is that i didn't do anything wrong and didn't hurt anyone.   
GT: when recess started i filled the balloons and loaded my backpack, then went to the teacher's lounge and told him and everyone else in there "hey i'm going to throw water balloons at smitty, jones, carrol and that kid from the basket team in revenge for my ruined lunch and the name calling and that black eye you never did jack shit about, okay?"   
GT: and when he finally stood up to tell me not to I ran the hell back out and raised the balloons up screaming REVENGE!! and did just that and he was there to see it because he came running after me!   
GT: along with a couple other teachers i think.   
GT: he kept screaming for me to stop but i totally didn't until i was full on out of balloons.   
GT: and smitty's gang couldn't run away without losing face and couldn't hit me because the teachers were there and they're big on deniability soooooooo   
TG: yeah but that just means the teachers saw it happen   
TG: you got your revenge but your probably gonna be the problem kid now   
GT: shut up, i'm not done!   
TG: i don't think they'll be happy about you sassing them up and pointing out their uselessness either   
TG: yeah okay how else did you fuck this up   
GT: well see, the teachers were so flabbergasted they took us to the principal.   
TG: oh fuck im facepalming so hard   
GT: shhhhhhhh!   
GT: this is my story, you can spam my screen with shitty rap lyrics later but now is MY TURN to spam the shit out of you.   
GT: anyway.   
TG: ooooh we got a badass over here   
GT: those dumbasses were wibbling, sniffling, basically doing the full song and dance like i'd tagged them with acid or something.   
GT: and the principal was like blah blah blah no matter the perceived grievances blah blah should learn to fit in blah blah exaggerated reaction blah blah i understand but i'm still going to suspend you.   
TG: so now youre suspended great   
GT: will you shut up and let me finish?   
GT: and no, i'm not suspended!   
TG: why are you still awake then its nearly midnight for you isnt it dont you have school tomorrow   
GT: i'm still awake because this red text douche keeps interrupting my awesome victorious tale.   
GT: okay so he said he was going to suspend me, and smitty's guys are all smirking behind me, i could totally tell.   
GT: so i told him okay then, let me see if i have this right. a glassful of dubious water on my food which cost actual money is a harmless joke i should laugh off, but diluted, washable, non-toxic gouache in no danger of being ingested and used with all due previous warning is a suspension-worthy misdemeanor. thank you for clarifying, at least when my dad asks me why i don't want to set a foot in here anymore, i'll have a better explanation than my classmates are making it impossible for me to learn jack shit.    
GT: i can tell him instead that school policy is making it impossible for me to learn jack shit.   
GT: i've been homeschooled before so this is no big loss.   
TG: oh my god did you go insane in that room   
GT: possibly! i was just so pissed off.   
GT: it was like i was okay with smitty, i mean i don't even really dislike smitty and his dumb cronies. they're just dumbasses with shitty taste wearing their pants falling off their butts.    
GT: and when they drenched my food with what they said was toilet water it really was more of an annoyance than anything.   
GT: i mean it obviously wasn't toilet water.   
GT: it was dumb. i just bought another lunch.   
GT: and about the punch, well, it was low and i was angry at first but two hours later it was just more funny than anything, did i tell you jones broke a finger on my cheekbone? ha ha!   
GT: and about the nicknames, well, they were irritating but i gave back as good as i got, so whatever.   
GT: the thing is i'm not the only guy they tried to harass.   
GT: i'm just the guy they're failing at harassing, and there are kids who legit cower when they walk by, like hide behind places and stuff. did i tell you that? because it's fucked up.   
GT: and then there's this stinky old raisin who'll slap their wrists but suspend me. fuck that shit!   
GT: i told him basically all that, only with a lot more spitting, then dared him to call my dad. god i was such a pill.   
GT: what was i thinking.   
TG: im too tired to even come up with words to diss you with   
TG: that was so supremely dumb its basically the god tier of dumb if dumb was a deity your level of dumb would dethrone the god of dumb and youd be the king of all dumb cosmos   
TG: yet somehow according to your previous words you were not in fact kicked out of the school along with the garbage how did you operate that miracle   
GT: well, things get a little fuzzy in some points because i was super nervous, but he did call my dad, and also their parents.   
GT: and we were stuck in the waiting room until then, and smitty sat by me and i think he was trying to psyche me out?   
GT: whenever the secretary seemed distracted he'd lean down and mumble in my ear that his dad was a lawyer and that i was screwed forever and so was my dad because his dad was going to sue the two of us.   
GT: so one time when the secretary stopped glaring at us and went back to typing stuff i turned to him and whispered "are you trying to seduce me?" and wiggled my eyebrows. you should have seen his face! it was so great.   
TG: so after throwing homoerotic subject at your schoolyard enemy what did you do next   
GT: nothing really, we waited around until like 7pm until all the moms and dads were around.   
GT: mine came first, he just sat by me and we sat there side by side in manly silence. smitty stopped whispering sweet nothings in my ear when he arrived which was a bonus.   
GT: smitty's dad was also wearing a suit and a hat but he didn't look nearly as sharp as mine, i tell you.   
GT: my dad is so sharp, he could shave himself with himself.   
GT: jones had this really shrilly mom who immediately started coddling him and treating his rainbow-stained clothes like the end of the world. it was awesome at first but then i started getting embarrassed for him, poor guy.    
GT: i kinda think she was doing it on purpose actually.   
GT: carrol's dad was also weird and overbearing, i didn't really get the guy, and then basket dude's parents came and the adults were all herded into the principal's room.   
GT: helloooooooo, where the hell are you?   
TG: oops sorry bro just arrived and wanted help with some boxes   
TG: brb keep talking   
GT: fine, go get your ass kicked or whatever.   
GT: anyway i have no idea what they talked about, but they were in there for a long time, and there was shouting, but when they came out...   
GT: well, everyone was pretty calm and subdued!   
GT: and then the principal said that i wasn't going to be suspended, but i'm going to have detention for a week, which is annoying but i was sorta prepared for going in.   
GT: and then he said smitty's gang was going to be suspended for 2 days, and then get two weeks detention for all the crap they did.   
GT: and their parents were like yeah, yeah, that is fair. the look in their faces!   
GT: and in mine too i guess.   
GT: i was totally gobsmacked.   
GT: dave is a poopy poop face who's not around.   
GT: anyway, dad talked to me all the way home about attitudes and responsibility and blah blah blah i won't bore you with it.   
GT: he made me bake like five cakes, though. five! he said it was to commemorate my manly decisive attitude which finally brought justice to the schoolyard, but i think it was also some sort of subtle punishment, because, well, i do admit i was incredibly lucky and things could have gone hells of wrong.   
GT: and if they were really meant as a prize i really don't think he'd make me stay up until 2am learning how to pipe roses.   
GT: i've seen it coming for a while but he's been really fired up about family legacies lately, ugh.   
GT: he's been a whirlwind since we found out uncle jake was actually, well, our uncle.   
GT: speaking of which, somehow it leaked out that i've got a rich relative, and now i'm getting facebook messages from people at school i never even knew existed asking if it's true my grandpa's loaded.   
GT: i've been linking them all to the wikipedia article on colonel sassacre, that should tide them by.   
GT: i hope your bro is kicking your ass really hard.   
GT: dude i only stayed awake this late to talk to you and you leave me hanging? ruuuuuuuude!   
GT: btw, uncle jake said he has some super cool secret to tell me soonish, like super duper FBI level secret, and i can let you in!   
GT: i don't know what it is yet but i'm so hype man, uncle jake has the craziest stories.   
GT: but seriously, if you don't show up soon i might review my stance re: secret sharing with striders.   
TG: oh man sure im hype about being told all these eccentric old man company secrets over an unsecured connection but im gonna have to turn my comp off soon   
TG: bro went and bought me a desk   
TG: a new computer desk with drawers and shit   
GT: okay, i'm confused now.   
TG: its got a matte finish and wheels and its a desk   
TG: holy shit   
GT: wasn't your cinderblock desk cool and ironic and stuff?   
TG: sure it was super ironic that i had this hella expensive gaming rig wobbling on top of a half-assed board but how was i supposed to get my homework out of my sight   
TG: drawers man   
TG: im cry   
GT: don't be cry.   
TG: yeah anyway im not sure what got into him but he just showed up with all these fucking ikea boxes like he caught some dadly bug or something   
GT: that sounds dangerous!   
GT: maybe he came in contact with dadly radiation.   
TG: and then he'll develop dadly powers and go out there heroing it up with dadly firearms haha   
TG: oh shit theres one for my turntables too   
TG: and a bed frame   
TG: and uh some sorta cabinet i think   
TG: for him though not for me    
TG: i knew it was way too many boxes for a single desk   
TG: my dreams of an epic apartment wide CEO table are dashed   
TG: aw shit it all looks boring as fuck   
TG: ice gray or some such drab-ass color    
TG: goddammit of course they were the cheapest ones   
TG: will have to come up with some ironic decals   
TG: paper it over with those stickers with crazy little kinda reflective squares   
TG: or maybe not theyre fucking ugly   
GT: oh man, it's legit awesome that your bro bought you real furniture, i'm super happy for you, it's like the first actually cool thing i ever heard him do.   
TG: im not sure how to react to that   
GT: but all of a sudden i can't keep my eyes open! :( sorry.   
TG: yeah yeah go off to dreamland and leave me alone here in the middle of all this cardboard   
TG: see if I care   
GT: send me some pictures later though! i bet your room will look a lot less like a weird cluttery nest.   
TG: ill forgive you for that only because youre a derp   
TG: here have a picture

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] sent ghostyTrickster [GT] file "landofikeaandcardboard.jpg" --

TG: its amazing how he can be such a pro at putting computer parts together but be completely defeated by a bunch of drab gray wooden boards   
TG: hes not reading the instructions fucking hell   
TG: my bro is awesome but sometimes hes just not so awesome   
GT: ehehehe!   
TG: must you laugh at my pain   
GT: nah, it's just...   
GT: not too long ago you'd never say something like that and frankly it had me a bit worried.   
TG: yeah time flies and then your parent is suddenly corny   
GT: my dad has always been corny.   
TG: bullshit i bet he used to run with the hells angels or something   
TG: every suburban family has a dark secret   
GT: bluuuh, i can't even think of a funny answer to that!   
GT: retort.   
GT: repartee.   
GT: i can't even think of appropriately amusing words before i post. :(   
TG: yeah yeah go have your snoozes already ill just turn my comp off and watch as bro finally notices he's screwed the drawer's side slidey thingy the other way around   
TG: see you tomorrow   
GT: good night!

\-- ghostyTrickster [GT] stopped pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 2009-10-26 - 00:12 -- 

\-- ghostyTrickster [GT] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 00:25 --

\-- ghostyTrickster [GT] sent turntechGodhead [TG] file "4leTAgg25lo12oblix2.dis*" \--

\-- turntechGodhead  [TG]  is offline! --

TG: got it   
TG: btw jsyk the bedframe is the wrong size   
TG: not sure if lol

\--ghostyTrickster  [GT] stopped pestering turntechGodhead  [TG] at 00:25 --


	2. > Past Eridan: Descend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Warning: Jittery animated gif later in this chapter. It's hidden, but displays on mouseover.**   
> 

You are many, many things, most of them in consequence of being Eridan.

Right now you are covered in sopor as you step out of your recuperacoon, your pajamas sticking to your skin and dripping generous gobs of slime on your wooden floor. The facts that you would wear a special set of clothes to ruin in your sleep, and that they would be covered in wizardry-related iconography, are both part and parcel of the unfortunate set of phenomena that comprises you. 

Yet, sleepwear fashion and magic symbology are the last thing in your mind at the moment. Your subconscious still holds you in its desperate grasp, and sleep visions weight you down heavier than your sopor-drenched clothes. You amble out of your hive and towards the surf with the ponderous and single-minded purpose of a ravenous zombie. 

You need to see her. 

Your lusus has grown accustomed to your sporadic sleepwalking fits — a misnomer, you would probably claim, as you are in fact doubly awake (though not always conscious of this fact) — and hovers anxiously about, shading your uncovered face against the setting sun as you drag your unwilling feet into the water. Finally, after fighting the waves and the currents and your heavy clothes all the way, the water closes above your head like a silver cage and invades your pipes as thick and heavy as molten lead; up above, your tremulous reflection grows distant as you let yourself sink gently down the underwater slope of your shipwreck island. 

In the last few seasons since the dreams started coming, you've breathed far more water than you ever did in your entire life before. 

Barnacle-encrusted debris from the wreck above pass you by as you sink, their forms grown familiar after your recurrent forays in this area (always this particular area, always only one reason why you'd bother). Seahorsedad swims close around you in a protective perimeter, ready to ward off any incoming threat.

Nothing approaches. Sea beasts of all sizes scatter at the sight of your lusus, and even the more aggressive and vengeful sea-dwelling trolls have learned in recent times that you are at your most dangerous when you're underdressed. Therefore you sink unimpeded, gently, weighted down by the anxiety and guilt and memories churning in your guts, and by the awful scenario that loops in your head over and over.

It grows progressively darker as you descend. The distant glow of service lights grows faintly visible down on the dim seabed, small faded stars struggling against the oppressive dark. Your lusus attempts one last futile push back towards the surface; he nuzzles your shoulder, tugs the back of your shirt, glubs worriedly and finally lingers back in defeat. You don't mind. This is as far as you could expect any sane mortal to willingly approach Gl'bgolyb. 

And there she undulates, impossibly massive, impossibly ugly, impossibly awful; her body is an immense writhing mass of tendrils knotting and rubbing and twitching blindly at each other, their incessant movement as carnal and crude as desperately rutting maggots on a rotting carcass. Underneath, her ugliness is duplicated by the vast smooth expanse of the contraption she zealously guards: a mirror exposing her unfathomable undersides, and indiscrete window to her nether regions.

The sight has long since ceased to impress you, and the fact that your mind chose this moment to cloud over with confusion is but coincidence.

You struggle to focus on what you're doing and why, but the knowledge threatens to slip from your waking mind. The press of water around you grows progressively heavier and harder to ignore, as distracting a presence as a clutching fist around your ribs. You tell yourself: Focus, Eridan. Think of what truly matters. Think of love, and friendship, and duty. Think of Feferi's hive right over there, and what you may or may not  find in it...

When your feet gently brush the pinnacle of her underwater spire, you have literally no fucking idea what's going on. 

This again! Lately it seems like you can't sleep without waking up surrounded by fuckin' cuttlefish, or lounging on a dismantling pile of uncomfortable cages. It frankly wigs a body out. It's enough to drive one to make a point of dressing up for bed; you honestly could not live with yourself if that nightmare you had about swimming nude all the way down here was anything close to real. (It was real.)

And of course, the one night you put on your pentacle jammies instead of the gold-trimmed silk lounging gown is the night you drift down here like a drowsy dumbass. The gown floats so impressively underwater, too— like a delicate, ethereal magical cloud. It's also slightly oversized, just enough that the bell-shaped sleeves reach your knuckles and the neckline exposes your collarbone in an interesting lopsided way. Everytime you put it on you look at yourself in the mirror, take off your glasses, open your eyes wide, admire the youthful harmlessness of your own figure, and despair of whatever the fuck is going on with your feelings.

In hindsight, coming down here in the lounging gown would have been a fucking disaster. You've always been desperately ruddy for Fef, so what possessed you to buy such shameless pale lingerie?

The thought of actually meeting her right now is growing progressively more awkward. Shit, what if you've _already_ met her tonight and you were asleep for it and this is the middle of a conversation she just momentarily stepped away from? You swear your mind is turning into a flippin' fishnet! In fact, you've just about made up your mind about turning tail and swimming home when she predictably jets up right in front of you, trident in hand.

"Eridan!" she says, all surprise. Pleasant surprise. Hopefully. 

" _Glorb!_ " you say when you open your mouth to return the greeting. Okay, no, you open your mouth in fright at her unexpected arrival, and of course the sound that comes out of it makes you thoroughly embarrass yourself. Why isn't your glubbing as natural and refined as the ones in cinematic media? Or as Feferi's. She glubs like a total champion. It probably takes practice.

You rally from your glubbing malfunction as smoothly as you can manage, pushing your undulating hair back out of your eyes and smiling suavely. "Erm, um, hello. Fancy seeing you here, huh? I mean," you stutter, "I was just passing by, and. Uh."

She rolls her eyes, grabs your free hand and swims back into her hive briskly enough to almost pull your arm out of its socket.

The place hasn't changed much since your last visit. Fuchsia walls, a small scattering of written memos, cages hanging from the ceiling, cuttlefish swimming around every which way like the cages and furniture were some sort of amusement obstacle course. To one side, the generator display, surrounded by pink stickers of cuttlefish and meowbeasts, and on the floor, the entrance to her personal bunker— a pressure-proof cylinder that runs nearly the entire height of her hive and partly into the seabed. 

It's not easy being her. You know it, but suddenly you just _know_ it, all over again, and you feel like your weird sleeping problems are bullshit and worthless, like you're a liar and a fake and a hypocrite, and like you have no business polluting her ocean with your presence. Aren't you just faking pale to get at her heart corner like a big fake fakey? Drifting from pale to red has always been touted as a valid strategy in movies and books handling complex romantic maneuvers, and if anyone in this dirt rock values strategy it's you — but lately you can't help wondering if it's not actually kind of a shitty move, and grappling with the notion that it sort of makes you, by association, kind of a shitty person.

But that is fallacious logic, says a part of you. Remember that list of fallacious arguments from the internet? This is just like one of them. The moral purity one. Just because you're associated with an immoral element doesn't make you inherently immoral. So by that logic just because you do shitty things doesn't automatically make you a shitty person; it merely makes you a person who does shitty things. And that is a very important distinction.

Sounds just as bad to me, you retort to yourself, but a third and very small part of you is trying to hail your attention, and you're trying really hard not to notice the implication it raises that you could _stop doing shitty things_ , like, any moment now.

Instead you push those uncomfortable thoughts aside to examine in some vague undefined "later". You'd rather just drift aimlessly in Feferi's respiteblock and watch as she digs up the pile of bent cages and drapes the entirety of her wardrobe over it. It's mostly silk and gauze and one-pieces, and therefore completely lacking in cushioning properties; even as you watch, the whole thing starts dismantling and drifting in the currents as it tends to do.

It's ridiculous. Who even came up with piles? You don't actually need piles of shitty hard pokey things for a feelings jam. How about a comfy pile of velvet pillows instead, or failing that even a pile of mostly clean algae? You could move this to a coral cluster, crush a few priceless specimen while admiring the colors. You could cultivate some moss over a duvet-shaped framework. You could come up with a bajillion excuses not to have an actual feelings jam, because you still don't want to be pale with Feferi, even when you're full of weird pale urges.

Eventually she gives up on keeping the thing together, and just pushes you into the undulating embrace of sadly unoccupied skirts as-is. They slowly close around you, floating ponderously, dreamlike, caressing your face and pajama'd arms, and it's... yeah... it's _sensual_. Unbidden, your imagination conjures up a vision of an entire school of Feferis swimming around you, giggling, wearing nothing but silk skirts, and wow, does this mean that, like, for the skirts to be fluttering about you this way, they'd be swimmin' on the horizontal as if they were checking your ass while their crotches were about _this close_ to your head—

The real Feferi yanks the skirt curtain open right in front of you, and your halfie shrinks so hard it reverse-cramps, leaving sick guilt behind. Her face is grim and serious. You irrationally hope she kicks you out forever.

"Now," she says, ferociously business-like, "are you going to glubbing _spew_ it, or is this going to be the sixth dark season all over again?"

========== >

The sixth dark season. To be frankly speaking, your recollections of the whole debacle are incredibly fuzzy, and what you do recall is quite unpleasant. You know you've attained a sort of reputation for being overwrought, but if there's a word that describes your state of spirit at the time, it's _wrought_. Not overwrought; rather, quite the appropriate measure of it. 

When you look back the whole thing feels as sudden as if a switch had been flipped. One night you were just doing your thing — drawing plans, contemplating maps, admiring your collection of wands — and in the span of a couple days you completely went to shit. You stopped eating for no reason you remember. You looked at things you'd always liked and you _hated_ them— not the hot, exciting hate of a kismesissitude, but a sick, distressing abhorrence. You were unexplainably upset, burst into tears without knowing why, laid awake numbly on the floor in nothing but a scarf and briefs. You burned plans, ripped maps and broke wands.

After the first few nights, things shifted into a different sort of madness. You decided to force yourself to eat because starving to death was dumb, but would frequently stroll into your food preparation block to find a half-eaten dish you didn't remember cooking or eating. You'd wake up face down on your keyboard and look at the screen to find a trollian window you didn't remember opening and characters you couldn't even read. You'd snap back to reality clinging to your lusus, once again only in briefs and a scarf and an achy face washed in tears. You'd catch yourself in the process of folding your capes in a box, pick them back out, and then start putting them back in as soon as you got distracted. 

It was also around that time that your sleepwalking started. At first you'd go to sleep in your cupe and wake up on the deck, confused and distressed, or stumbling around naked in the sand. Eventually you found yourself straying farther, snapping into consciousness underwater; sometimes you were slapped by a sudden gust of piping hot water, and opened your eyes to a million thousand bubbles churning in front of you. By some miracle your little cadre of dirtscraping friends didn't catch on to the degree of your breakdown, yet they could probably tell you were doing none too well, because eventually the one person you'd been desperately faking normalcy for suddenly showed up in your hive, trident and all, and would not take your hem-hawing for none.

You couldn't bear to tell her that you were going stark raving bonkers. Later on you'd convince yourself it was because you didn't want to give up on your scarlet chances, but at the time all you knew was that she'd rightfully give you up for a lost cause, a possibility that made you sick just to think about. So you chose to lie; to take your map-burning fit and go your merry way from there.

You told her you'd given up on killing all land-dwellers. 

She was so happy! She tried to hide it and remain solemn for your sake but you could just about tell. So you laid it on: Boo-hoo, you'd clutched onto the foolish notion because it made you oh so confused and lost to be without a goal in life. Boo-hoo, but even from the most practical and dispassionate point of view society would not hold itself standing without landdwellers. Boo-hoo, the need for workforce and menial-task handlers. Boo-hoo, not enough people to keep all this conquered galactic territory in check. 

Before you knew it you were embroiled in exciting political theorizing, and in the end you found yourself agreeing that, yes, if all land-dwellers were to disappear overday, the remaining aristocracy would simply develop a new system of social division and redistribution of resources based on some arbitrary characteristic such as fin size or horn shape. It was a surprisingly pleasant conversation, even though, strictly speaking, you'd basically steamrolled over your own most deeply held beliefs. 

But it was just as well, as you'd admit later. After all, statistically speaking seadwellers are a frightfully small percentage of trollkind, and while it kept the _real_ competition low, it also meant that in the absence of lowbloods everyone would by necessity be stuck with some sort of humiliatingly menial job. You ended up feeling stupid and shortsighted for not considering the practicalities of life after such a victory, but since you'd already admitted to giving up on getting rid of your future workforce, you just shrugged the retroactive embarrassment off. 

It certainly helped that Feferi... well.

That Feferi tearfully said that it took a great weight off her back. That she finally felt you two could have a true and productive moirallegiance rather than her being stuck holding the leash of a rabid, self-destructive barkbeast. That she finally felt like her efforts hadn't been useless. That you were actually interested in what she had to say rather than just listening out of obligation. That at times you were so tiring and overbearing that she'd wish you didn't even exist. That she could finally be rid of such an awful feeling. That you could start over from _scratch_.

You almost told her what you really wanted. You almost screamed _red_. But your strategic mind held you back; it said that the previous campaign was clearly a loss, that the groundwork you'd intended to lay had not been laid, that it was time to regroup and start over. 

So you smiled and nodded, and swore to yourself you'd do such a bang-up job she'd helplessly flip red. Then you'd make your move, put your cards on the table, stage a cinema-worthy scarlet confession and sweep her off her feet. You'd totally do it. In a week, maybe. In a season, definitely.

You simply don't know where that resolution went. But you suspect it's crushed under the inexorable reality of the fact that you're doing no bang-up job, and that you started over from a lie.

You still show up in her hive without knowing why you're there. You're still nuts.

========== >

It's totally the sixth dark season all over again. Strictly speaking the sixth dark season never stopped. But what you mean by that is, you're totally going to bold-face lie about it now just like you did then.

"Hm," you say, looking down into your hands and racking your mind for a believable lie to spin from. You suddenly wish you had a cup of tea to stare distressedly into. Not too long ago you used to imagine yourself holding a wine glass and looking vaguely alluring in an unintentional careless way. Why are your own mental scenarios changing on you? More madness, certainly.

"A-hem," she says, her hair and skirt-pile undulating around her like colorful tentacles. Cuttlefish swim in and out of the cloud of her hair. It should make her look beautiful and ethereal like a fantasy painting; instead it makes her presence sort of overwhelming, and you kinda want to hide and gibber.

You open your mouth, then wince when a garbled glub comes out. "Er," you try again, "I plain don't know quite where to start..." And it's technically true.

"You could start with why you're still in your silly sleepwear!"

You have a sudden impulse to derail things with a dumb lewd joke — something along the lines of "want me to take it off (eyebrow waggle)" — and immediately feel like a complete tool. 

"I'm having trouble sleeping," you mumble instead. It isn't even a lie. She pokes you with a foot, prompting for more, and your mind darts around for specifics. "I keep having this— nasty dream—"

Even as the words come out of your mouth, you're suddenly aware that they're true. 

"What is it about?" she asks, softer this time, paddling just a little bit closer to you.

Your mind freezes, and you start panicking despite yourself. You can't think of anything bad enough, everything feels too, too pedestrian, too old hat, obvious exaggerations; you consider for a moment going for something corny like _her death_ , but as soon as you think of that it becomes a real possibility and therefore too close, too awful to even contemplate. 

In the theater of your imagination, you'd always used to stage the tragedy of her possible loss with all due dramatic dignity, complete with soliloquies, velvet drapings, toppled wine glasses, shaky hands, mournful letters, violet recliners and a single tear. Sometimes you'd cry yourself to sleep imagining your own suffering and loss. Poor Feferi! Poor Eridan! But now it feels like you know more than you used to, and understand more than you used to. Death isn't a lowblood thing anymore. 

Rather than a single dignified tear, what you get is a thoroughly ridiculous low-grade gargling starting on the back of your throat.

You find your forehead pushed against the flat of Feferi's chest, her thoracic cage shield smooth and unscarred, undamaged, her aquatic-based expanding and contracting vascular pump beating strong. Its sound fills you at once with both despair and relief.

"I don't _know_ ," you confess, the last in a trifecta of truth, a feat for the records. "I just dream, and then I wake up, and I can't remember, and I feel shitty and it's awful. _Glub!_ "

Oh, would you look at that. What a beautiful glub! It jumped out of you like a panicked little trout swimming outta control, clenching gills and pipes and muscles in several pinpricks of pain, but it sounded just the right amount of dramatic. Wow!

And you start crying in earnest like a fucking wiggler, an activity even more degrading and undignified when taking place underwater. Your gills keep hitching and you're going to go into full aquatic hiccups and it's all going to be even more dreadful than this graceless little scene already is.

Her palm cups the back of your head and you don't even care that the gesture is a hundred percent pale because you yourself are clocking at seventy percent and rising. You're inexorably flipping quadrants into the one you've claimed to be in all along and it hurts, it fucking hurts, the lies, the assumptions, the fact that you can't even follow your own goddamn scenario, that the element complicating your carefully laid plans has been you all along. That even when your feelings are real you're still a fake, and that your face is technically between her breasts and yet you honestly don't even give a flipping rat's arse about no no no no this is a terrible time for your pants to go tight it's absolutely the worst possible time for—

You weakly push back, aroused and horrified, but Feferi is oblivious; she smiles down at your distressed face and pecks your forehead. 

"The dream is over," she says. "This is reality. Chin up! Reality is pretty nasty, but at least you can control _some_ of it."

You can't even control your own bulge. But you smile and nod and are grateful for the skirt that has sort of twined around your waist. She grins and squishes your cheeks; your loins start piping back down. Her breasts aren't even that big, c'mon. 

She shoots off through the floating fabric, and returns with a pair of vacuum-sealed candy slime canisters. 

"There's not much we can do about the dreams until you remember," she says, handing you one of the tubes. "So how about we make an arrangement? When you wake up from one of these nasty daymares, take a nice long ablution, make a bang-up breakfast, sing the dumbest song you can think of, then message me. If I don't answer right away it's probably because I'm still asleep! But unless the sun is high up I'll probably be right there to talk you out of your silly fretting." She pokes your cheek. "You silly."

You just nod and pop the candy slime's suckler in your mouth, feeling wrung out and spent. How are you supposed to remember that in your sleep? Is she going to scold you the next time you sleep-swim down in complete defiance of her perfectly reasonable arrangement? Is that going to make you _too overbearing_ again? You've never felt so completely out of control of your life. What is it you see in your dreams that drives you here over and over?

The worst thing is that you can almost feel the answer calling out to you as if from behind a thin, but opaque and frustrating wall. It's an angry call and an angry voice, and when you bang at that mental blockade you can feel it banging back, just as frustrated as you are. 

You are filled with sick exhilaration. You can do this— you feel the wall become thinner, you feel yourself approaching the voice, the terrible truth. You feel it reaching out to you, its secrets seeping into your mind like water seeping through a priceless map, its anguish—

You raise your heavy head, your eyes achy and your temples pulsing, and the first thing you notice is that you're not surrounded by skirts anymore.

The second thing you notice is that you're looking at her block from a different angle. 

The third is that you're holding a shrivelled, empty candy slime canister.

What were you doing just now? You remember receiving the canister. You don't remember being so fucking tired. You remember a vague unpleasant feeling of approaching wrath, and that's that. You don't remember moving, and you certainly don't remember sucking the candy canister dry.

You can feel the taste of it in your mouth, though. Raspberry.

The canister drifts away from your slack fingers. What happened? How long were you out? What have you been doing? _Where is Fef?_

That last question is the one that fills you with the most fear. As if out of a sadistic desire to freak you out harder, your mind spontaneously conjures up the sight of Fef lying limp and covered in fuchsia. Okay, that's bullshit, no, way to be a paranoid little shit, Ampora! But you still look around frantically, half expecting to see a cloud of pink drifting in.

A cloud does drift in, but it's comprised mostly of hair and cloth— Feferi's swimming back with another pair of canisters. She's changed into a loose, long dress. Her face is grim and unsmiling. Your eyes meet, and you can tell something in her changes, becomes shuttered. 

And then she stops in front of you and smiles very convincingly, her dress drifting and poofing around her like an ethereal mist.

"You look worried!" she says, cheerful as always, and offers you a canister. You watch your hand close around it from a whole another dimension. One of her wristbands is missing, you notice, but there's a line of small indentations on the back of her hand that matches its shape. 

You refuse to think, much less to draw any gut-churning conclusion from this set of evidences. Her wristband got recently yanked off in a completely harmless incident you're not privy to, and she changed into a shapeless body-covering garment because, because, she wanted to pale-impress you, yes. Her change in expression was a figment of your imagination. 

You're certainly not missing a patch of memory, and your last recollection certainly does not involve being suffused with a jumble of awful feelings. 

"Oh, I." You distantly boggle at how _normal_ your voice sounds. "I'm... I'm in my freaking pajamas. Hahaha!"

She chuckles along with you, and then ducks a little to look at your downturned face. 

"You still look inordinately fretful for that," she chides, softly.

"Yes, sorry," you say, pushing your hair back with your free hand and wishing you could rip your way out of your own skin. "I just... I don't know what happened to my sense of style." You giggle, teetering on the edge of hysteria. "My capes... are all in a box. I don't know why I put them there. Maybe I should unpack them? Does this qualify as an identity crisis?"

You meant to sound joking, but your voice is small and pathetic as that last sentence slips out. You suspect your expression could even be described as "beseeching". The look in Feferi's face is pure sympathy and understanding— and you scrutinize every inch of her for evidence of fear or nervousness, but somehow there is none. 

Their lack confuses you. If they were there... but if they are not...

"Oh, and I—" you stutter, your mouth moving on automatic, "I'm gonna have to swim up there in plain view of every other maritime bum out there, and have I made myself unpopular with them, huh? Hahaha." Her face falls minimally. "Haha. Oh. Oh glubbing shit."

You put your hands in your hair, cover your face, pump your legs as if hoping to propel yourself through the walls. She doesn't like feeding lusii to her mom, she upright hates the fact that you're "forced" to kill them, so why did you bring it up? The fuck is wrong with you. You fucked up. _You fucked up_.

"Fef, I'm _sorry_ , I'm so not fit for conversation today," you finally say, and your voice is the most pathetic wheedle you ever subjected your own ears to. "I'm no good. I'm fucking brainless. Stupid sleep bullshit. Tell me off when I pull this shit, will you? Tell me..." your voice turns into a whisper. "Tell me if I hurt you. Okay? Please?"

A little spurt of laughter escapes her mouth; she lets go of the canister she was holding, allowing it to drift nearby, and squishes your cheeks with both hands. 

"You little glubber!" she says, all affectionate. "Since when do I take anything lying still? Much less your whining! You didn't hurt me." She squeezes your face one last time before letting go, fishing her canister back before it strays out of her reach. "It's just very frustrating! It's a problem I can't wait to solve."

Her eyes stray up and to the side, as if she could stare through the ceiling at Gl'bgolyb's vast squirming body. Her face is full of melancholic fondness. You suppose it makes sense. She's still young, but eventually she'll be strong enough to suppress the Vast Glub by will alone. And you... will be out of a job, you suppose. 

You had never noticed how much of a strain this duty put between you two. You are not entirely sure when you became aware that it did — probably in your dreams, maybe during a fit of wand-stomping or listless lying around in underwear. All you know is that right now, at this moment, you'd be relieved to have it over with.

"I see," you say lamely, belatedly. "Anyway, I, uh... really should go and put on something decent. You know." You tug at your pajamas. "This just ain't me."

You're tired, ashamed, sore, defeated, and this was the worst, most awkward goodbye ever uttered in a royal visit. You might as well have told her your looks were more important than her feelings. This certainly isn't the case at all, of course; you are ignoring her feelings for the sake of your feelings, not your clothes. This makes you slightly less reprehensible.

Self-awareness is hard. It's hard, and only a depressingly small ratio of any given population would understand. But you just can't do this right now. You'll find a way to make up for it. Maybe. And hopefully it won't just make everything worse. 

"Maybe you could leave a change of clothes here?" she offers.

" _Bur— glur— blur— baybe?!_ " you stutter and glub at the same time, a veritable feat. Your underbelly is jumping to undue conclusions. "I guess, uh, sounds like a good idea!? Perhaps!?" Your voice's gone so high dolphins everywhere are probably homing in on you. "So I'll, uh, go look into that! Yes!"

"Just go already, you stupid basshole!" she says, waving you away cheerfully.

"Okay! Fine!" You glide up to one of the high windows, fumble the latch, push it open and the outward current nearly yanks the canister from your hand; on a crazy impulse you turn back and shout— " _Pale for you!_ "

And then you shoot off, disbelieving your own shamelessness.

Up above the ocean is dark and awash in weak purple-pink; night has fallen already, and the pink moon is doing its rounds. You swim up at an angle you know by instinct, and soon you spot the white speck that is Seahorsedad swimming back and forth, waiting patient and faithful. No other lusus could ever bear to stay this close to Gl'bgolyb.

You pick up your pace and bowl into your Custodian's chest, and your arms fly and wrap around his torso.

"Dad, I'm pale for Fef," you mumble into his neck. "I really am, I don't know how it happened, but then sometimes I'm not, and it feels gross."

He shakes his white head in an underwater whinny and buries his nuzzle between your horns. It helps, somewhat. You can almost fool yourself into believing he understands. 

All the things you thought you wanted, you don't want them anymore. All the things you thought you liked, you can't bear to associate yourself with anymore. All the things you thought you knew turned into so much fog when put under scrutiny. Your own memory is unreliable, and your body is bisected; your upper and lower halves are at odds.

Is it possible for your bulge to want things your head does not? If your body still wants Fef this way, does it not just make you a fake-ass moirail like you've always been? Should you be pursuing her red like your shallow base instincts are asking of you, even though your mind has come to find the notion abhorrent?

When your mind went blank, _what did you do?_

That is perhaps the question that fills you with the most horror. When the mind shuts down, the body takes over— your sleepwalking is evidence enough. Is that what truly brings you here? Are you just fooling yourself by latching onto the notion of vaguely threatening dreams you can't even remember?

Your cynicism says yes, but doesn't convince you. Feferi was fine. She was acting suspiciously, but didn't display fear or keep her distance. Frankly, she could probably kick your ass her very own self, it's not like you even packed your rifle or anything. For all you know she might well have, and that's why your legs and shoulders kinda want to cramp. You may have yanked off a wristband, but she probably tossed you around like a ragdoll.

Maybe... maybe she knows you're not yourself in such times. Maybe that's why she put on the lounging gown— she was concealing her body so as to not trigger the ferocious beast inside of you. You find the notion incredibly romantic. She was certainly beautiful in it, but it was a beauty you could appreciate in different terms, that made you feel soft and contemplative and at peace. It was probably the slow fluttering of silks around her, so ethereal and calming.

You sweep a leg over Seahorsedad's unsaddled back — owie, you're feeling muscles you didn't even know you had — and cling to his neck as he carries you the rest of the way to the surface. Fef is taking care of you; she can't reach into your head and fix what's broken but she _can_ handle you, and if she hasn't confronted you over this issue yet, it's understandably because there's literally nothing you can do about it at the moment other than freak out, which is highly counterproductive in a moirallegiance scenario. 

Having thus convinced yourself that everything is under some measure of control, you're feeling fairly chipper by the time Seahorsedad breaks the ocean's surface. You don't even much mind the gargling and coughing rigamarole involved in shifting through breathing apparatuses, or the muscle aches you barely felt underwater simultaneously blaring for attention. If anything positive can be said of your sleepwalking forays, it's that they net you some extra exercise without you actually being there to feel bored.

Seahorsedad deigns to carry your sorry ass to your respiteblock, trailing water all the way, and you still regret having to slide down to the floor and manage gravity on your own. You halfheartedly tug a sopor towel from the stack by your recuperacoon, and can't even bring yourself to bemoan your fraught existence when the rest of them topple down like a temporary flarp fortress. It's just a bunch of fucking towels. You'll deal with them later.

You pat your wet pajamas down some, and rub your hair more for the sake of feeling your own fingers digging into your scalp than because dryness is something you require at the moment. Something tugs at your hair near the base of your horn, and you pick at it distractedly. You've got half a mind to just climb back into your cupe, and fuck the rest of the night. You're in the middle of an identity crisis, you're allowed, right?

Your computer chimes, and you launch yourself at your desk so fast that a committee should be created specifically to award you a medal for it.

\--  carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA] \-- 

CG: hello. i know this is a bit sudden, but could you confirm your dwelling location. there's this thing I want to send you.

Well, it's not Fef. But what _is_ this? Looks like some idiot stole Kar's login. Could an asshole be any more transparent about digging info outta you? It's upright embarrassing to even be subjected to such a sore attempt. Just goes to show, being a hacker is no proof of carrying a working brain. (Take that, shitblood!)

You drum your fingers on your desk, gauge your own daring; finally, you flip to your chat settings, turn on the nautical puns plugin (downloaded specifically to pun around with Fef, and abandoned when you started feeling shitty for cheating) and slide the gauge up to max.

CA: yo man reelly???   
CA: a thing???  
CA: for me???  
CA: omfg i love things  
CG: yes.  
CA: i love all the things  
CA: you da best  
CA: yeeee yeeee carcininininin dances with you thing thing thing  
CA: yeeeeeee  
CA: wwhat is the thing  
CA: *what whoops stupid stuck key  
CG: it is a surprise.  
CA: oh man oh man i love surprises  
CA: even more than things  
CA: will i be surprised  
CG: very.  
CA: omggg cant wwaitttt  



	3. > Karkat: Be the Guest

When you first wake up, there's a nurse leaning over you. Somehow you recognize this creature as a nurse, even though it's wearing green instead of gray, a baggy cap instead of a hood, no shades over its maroon eyes, and has a creepy, alien-like dark-red skin tone; you don't even question its presence or intentions. 

But you do say: "Oh my _god_ , I don't want faygo! Stupid faygo. Fucking hell," and then go right back under.

When you wake up again there's no more nurse, but the creepy old alien who came to fetch you is back and sitting by your platform. You stare at him and wonder why you were even thinking about faygo back then. Was it a dream? What a weird thing to complain about to some alien nurse. Why would aliens even have faygo, or speak your language to begin with.

"Looks like you're awake!" says the alien, cheerfully, in your language. The strangely shaped fur over his lip twitches amiably. "Feeling better? Any pain? Can you sit up? Good! I'm Jake, by the way— Jake Harley, but you can call me _Grandpa_ if you want to. It's kind of like a title!"

You're not even done sitting up. There's a tugging at your back, but no pain, at least. You stare askance at the old alien; an unknown creature with unknown agenda, yes, but somehow he's the Grand Elder's ally, and you can only trust the Elder to know who to trust. 

In the end you go for careful politeness.

"I... _assume_ you know who I am—" and then you add, hesitantly, "...Grand-Pa."

"Yes, yes— Karkat Vantas, Night of the Stars, Comforter of the Peeps, etcetera-etcetera." He waves a dismissive hand. "I've heard plenty about you, even before you came— why, you could say I have an iron in your fire! Though in hindsight that is pretty unfortunate phrasing. Let's forget about it and say instead that your people and me have had a _long_ understanding."

"What?" you say, very intelligently.

"We've set up a bit of cultural exchange of a sort," he says, and shifts on his chair like he's just too self-satisfied to sit still. "I translate and deliver the latest in medical knowledge, and up comes a passionate whippersnapper willing to brave the risks inherent in learning from the source. You know Lizzie?"

"Yes?" you blurt out, but mostly because you vaguely remember that name being uttered in your presence at some point. Who the fuck was Lizzie?

" _Five_ sweeps in Harvard!" he raises both hands, as if announcing a great prize. "And somehow managed to stay under the radar. It boggles me to this day, what a lass."

"Huh," you mumble. 

"Are you quite _sure_ you're awake, lad?" the old man finally directs some words at you, instead of at himself.

You raise a hand and sort of point it at him. "Look," you start, and pause to get your bearings. Raise the hand a little higher when it looks like the guy might yap again. "You've been saying a bunch of words at me, and I have no fucking clue what they're about. No," you raise the hand back where it had been drooping, "I don't actually know who Lizzie is, and I have no idea why I should be impressed by her surviving five sweeps at whatever the hell kind of land How-var is. I do get that you're somehow responsible for the Cult's medical stuff?"

"Yes!" he nods, emphatically.

"Gee," you say, flatly. "Thanks. Why are your people allying with the Cult?"

"They're not," the alien says, very matter-of-factly, and your entire body goes cold. 

But the asshole has the temerity to laugh; he laughs until he wheezes, slaps his brown-clothed leg, wipes a clear secretion from the corner of his eye. "Ah, my lad!" He says, dramatically, eyes closed and chin raised in theatrical passion. "My poor confused lad! How little you know yet."

And his demeanor changes completely. His body tenses, his eyes narrow, his grin becomes predatory; he turns to you sharply like a madman sharing a vicious joke, hands raised with clawed fingers as if he were about to pounce on the punchline, and snarls—

" _My people don't know shit about yours_." The grin widens; he slaps your shoulder, punchline told, permission to laugh granted. "Only me and mine, kiddo! Fewer and more secret than your cult!" He sags back against the chair, palms raised to the ceiling. "We're but a tiny humble planet, filled with very arrogant, very naive children. Our lifespans are short, our technology young. We have no cosmic travel yet."

You flop back on the padded platform, and your back barely even complains. You stare at the white ceiling above. "Then..."

You said that "then", but you have no idea what to follow it up with. Then what? Then how? Then _the fuck_? You just stare at the old alien and hope he'll guess what you want to know.

The curly ends of his facial whiskers wiggle a bit. "The topic of how Trollkind first acquired space travel is... of _interest_ , I say. My people lay less importance on cosmic voyages than on health. But it's no wonder; we're mammals." The fur slants over a crooked smile. "Raising our young takes a lot of time and energy, and culturally we hate the thought of all that investment going to waste. If we can prevent illnesses, heal wounds, live longer— well, that certainly is a much greater priority than gallivanting around our uninhabitable satellite! Even though it sure would be cool if there were benevolent aliens out there to say hi to and learn from..."

He crosses his legs, stares at the junction between wall and ceiling as if he could see far beyond.

"As you can see," he says, almost too quiet for you to hear, "we'd be helpless against the Condesce."

_Oh_. 

Well. That makes sense? Of a sort. If this old alien is hoping you'll... somehow overthrow the Condesce before the armada reaches his sitting quackbeast of a planet. Then maybe his investment makes sense. But...

"I can't beat the Condesce on my own," you admit, weakly.

"You won't have to," he says, gently, his voice suddenly young. "That's why we're here."

You glance at him— he _looks_ younger, even though he hasn't changed in any way you could pinpoint, but when you squint through the haze covering your sight you think you can almost see— yes— you see— this _asshole_ —

You blink, and just like that you know you missed a chunk of conversation. 

Time is crooked. Your head feels stuffed. Did you faint?

"Did I faint?" you mumble. You're weary near to the bones, and your body seems to have shifted slightly on the bed. A bit more, and you'd have to change your status to "cruddy".

"Oh?" Grand-Pa has relocated to the corner, where there's a screen full of alien gibberish in cult-code, and is holding up a tablet exactly like the one Elder Charter favors. "Um, I guess? You could say so. I must have wiped you right out! I'll be mindful from now on— you're still an invalid after all!"

You don't really have an answer to that comment, offensive as it is, so you just lie there and glower tiredly at his general direction. Eventually he leaves, with a jaunty wave and a nod, and you stare at the blank ceiling for what feels like hours until boredom finally tires you out the rest of the way.

================>




When you wake up next, feeling mostly improved, Grand-Pa cheerfully tosses some comforters on your lap and says "Put these on, I'm going to show you a _thing!_ "

A more thorough examination confirms that the comforters are cut in the shape of clothes. You put them on over the bright modesty garb you woke up in, and allow the alien to lead you out. Walking feels a little weird after so much time spent still; your legs wobble, and your back still pulls a bit. 

You go down creepily empty greenish corridors, climb pearly stairs with iron railings, walk past white doors, and at least two aliens in white trenchcoats glance at you curiously as you pass by. Any moment now, Grand-Pa is going to reveal himself the head of an entire cabal of rainbow drinkers, and your life is going to turn into a really shitty book.

Then you're led through a door, and Grand-Pa pauses to bestow upon you a pair of awkward, thick digitless gloves. He then wraps a scarf around your neck and fussily arranges it halfway up your ears (gee, such armor, don't you feel safer now), and finally tugs some ugly baggy hat over your horns. Stares a bit. Adjusts it just so. Nods to himself.

"Nice," he says, cryptically (everything he says is cryptic), before giving you a pair of mirrored shades.

You put them on and instantly feel like a very cozy douche.

Once finished tending to your lack of fashion, Grand-Pa steps back and instantly equips a similar getup. Only then are you truly aware of how ridiculous it looks; the old man doubles in bulk, and nothing is visible of his face but two huge white curls.

The curls point up, and he leads you down a short corridor towards another door.

Past the door is a white wasteland.

A light breeze caresses the little of your face that is exposed, and it feels like needles into your pores. The hostile, oppressive air presses heavy against the padding of what you now understand to be protective gear. You're standing on a white balcony overlooking nothing but whiteness — white dunes on the ground; white mountains on the horizon; white clouds on the sky — and white fluff flutters around you. You could have sworn it was the fuzzy dawn off an angel's wings, disdainfully molting over your head as if scorning to reap your soul, but as it melts over your swollen sleeve, you suddenly _get_ what you're looking at.

Ice. Ice everywhere. Ice as far as the eye could see.

"Is this your planet?" you whisper, discretely as if there were truly an angel overhead who might otherwise take notice of you.

The curly fur slants over a crooked smile.

"My planet is rather wild," says Grand-Pa— louder than you, but not as boisterous as before. A little solemn. "We're close to one of the poles, and the weather here is always like this. But halfway to the other pole there are deserts almost as hot as the ones in Alternia, and between here and there you get all sorts of places, each more different than the other."

Oh. So the entire planet _wasn't_ an icy wasteland. For a moment you thought you could get why they tried so hard to keep each other alive. 

"Then why did you bring me out here?" you ask, even though you can already guess the answer.

"To _break the ice!_ " he quips, and to your utter disgust raises a pair of finger pistols at you. A white tooth spontaneously reflects a beam of light behind his slanted smile. You can almost guess the wink behind his douche shades.

Old people should not be allowed. They just... shouldn't.

"Fuck you and your puns," you say, flatly, turning to face him head-on. "I'm not an idiot, I don't need an incentive to not run off like a pan-shattered dumbass into the midst of the first metropolitan gathering of anus-licking mammalian aliens—"

"What?" Grand-Pa asks.

"—and deliver myself into the arms of a people whose stance regarding the Empire would likely be nebulous at best even if you hadn't already told me it was non-existent to begin with. I appreciate your care but I don't appreciate being treated like I'm incapable of taking stock of the situation—"

"What?" Grand-Pa asks.

"—and frankly, how smug is this display, bringing me out here —fuck— to show me my lack of escape routes —fuck— stop twitching your whiskers at me!" You squeeze your eyes shut. "Fuck! How are you doing this!?"

"What?" Grand-Pa asks.

"You're hurting my eyes! _Fuck!_ " You squint at the whiskers curling out of the lumpy pile of ice-gear. It sneaked up on you; you didn't notice you had been blinking more often than usual until your eyes started watering furiously. "Is this some advanced medical thingamajigger?"

"What?" Grand-Pa asks.

" _Don't play dumb!_ "

Grand-Pa looks down at his chest stupidly, then looks around, up and down, and behind himself. " _Oh!_ " he says, in sudden amusement; he shakes his head to himself and then steps around you, standing on your opposite side. "This should be better," he says, even though you can't imagine how.

"I can't imagine how," you say, although admittedly you find your face has stopped reflexively wincing. "What the fuck?"

"It was just the sun," he says, shrugging as if that particular string of words wasn't _completely fucked up_.

You crouch down and curl around your knees.

"I'm blind," you mumble dumbly. You suddenly can't tell up from down. 

"What, really?" Grand-Pa asks.

"Yes!" you squeak, then scrupulously add: "...I think!"

"It's probably temporary," he says, soothingly. "Our sun is pretty puny compared to yours. You'd have to stare at it a lot longer to cause permanent damage, all the more through such a cloud cover!"

You blink a few times. A purplish smear swims inside your retina, fading in and out as you focus. Your eyes stop watering quite as furiously.

"I," you mumble, "I guess. If you say so." 

You uncurl slowly, blinking non-stop. Grand-Pa offers a gloved palm, and the gesture is so familiar that you lay your own over his on automatic. The lack of size discrepancy doesn't even hit you.

He leads you back inside, exchanges his shades for his normal glasses. "Sorry about that, lad," he says, overly sympathetic. "I'll have some eyedrops brought out, and if you have trouble still just let us know. I just wanted to give you a more informed overview of your options!"

"I could tell," you attempt to say dryly, but are hampered by the fact that you can't stop rubbing your eyes.

"Yes, well!" He laughs a bit, leans against the wall. "As you can see, the environment outside is not exactly conducive to much frolicking! Some of my species regularly make their living in those conditions, but I don't recommend emulating their example without some thorough training beforehand. And I'm afraid this facility is limited in its space, it's really not meant for energetic go-getting children, I do believe."

"Yes," you say, mostly because he seems to be waiting for a cue.

"We have other hideouts we can take you to, some even in more pleasant locales, I say! But our planet doesn't really have a handy network of tunnels through which we can surreptitiously move around, in fact moving around is a goddamn chore, so sneaking you about will not be without its share of excitement! And holing you up in a hideout in the middle of bumfuck nowhere is not really conducive to letting you meet new people and get to know new places and all that good stuff, which is a pity as it would be a spanking good time to show you around."

"Thanks," you mumble. Blink a little more. The purple smear _seems_ to be fading.

"So... it's your call!" He says, cheerfully. "You can stay here and, like, maybe build an army of snowmen and have snowball fights with them, I guess, while you wait for the Dark Hive to be redeployed — and I do believe that'll take a quarter of a sweep at the very least — or you can go places under a _truly very clever disguise_. What say you?"

He smiles expectantly, and you stare at him through a slowly fading, sideways-sliding imprint of their sun in your eyes. What say you to _what_? Staying in this facility in the middle of a frozen wasteland or... going somewhere else you know shit about, under some dumbass disguise? Where would you be going? What kind of disguise?

"Yeah, I'm fine with staying," you say, to his apparent surprise.

"What?" Grand-Pa asks.

"You heard me," you continue, flatly. "I have absolutely no objections whatsoever to hiding indoors while fecal matter is launched at the paddle-whirl outside and sprays far and wide onto places that are not me. That's been my entire life, basically. So if you can keep me fed in here, I'm good with whatever."

The old alien is still. You would gloat internally over having struck this insufferably cheerful lump of whiskers dumb, except...

Perhaps it's an artifact of the whistling inside your scarf-muffled ears. Perhaps it's his nearly wholly concealed face, and the way his whiskers appear to have frosted over into rigid, multifaceted handlebars. But his silence is ominous. Powerful. Heavy as the frozen air outside. Edging slightly into the lethal. 

You have a feeling his question wasn't supposed to have a wrong answer, but you somehow managed to find one.

"...no," he says, finally, slowly as if coming to a surprising realization.

"What?" You ask.

"No," he repeats. "I can't be having with this, lad, and neither can you. It's decided!" He whirls around on his heels and marches away, decisive and larger than life; had he been wearing a gray cape, it would have billowed in the most epically cinematic way. 

" _What_ is decided?" you hurry after him, growling despite yourself. Old people and their incomprehensible decisions will be the death of you!

"No being cooped up anywhere," he announces, as grave as the Grand Elder but with none of his reasonableness. "No being isolated, no being out of touch. You're in a new planet with new people and new things and by gum you're going to enjoy the fuck out of it or I'm not _Jake motherfucking Harley!_ "

You'd protest, except you're pretty sure you can see air steaming up around his shoulders, and on the inside of the padded jacket he's in the process of energetically hurling to the side.

================>




Mostly you just go back to the resting platform— but in between sleep and pills and concoctions and examinations they somehow manage to fit their strange preparations. The dark-red nurse from before rubs a line of several thick honey-like pastes on the back of your arm, turning your skin varying shades of pearly-brownish, and varnishes your claws in several colors; then he very seriously takes pictures, types results down, wipes everything off and leaves. Later a white-haired female walks in with an armful of hats which she then proceeds to fit over your head without preamble, all of which go over your horns, all of which she coos over and laughs at, before dumping them somewhere and leading you to sit in front of a bunch of horrifying blinky machinery. 

It feels like about a couple nights later when she comes back in with a booklet in Cult Code characters and a pair of small joined containers.

"There's your phrasebook!" she says, cheerfully dumping the thing on your blanketed lap. "You'll be glad to know I added a special section on bad words _just for you_." Then she sits on your platform — butting your legs aside — and raises the conjoined containers on a palm. "Now let's test these sclera lenses!"

Out of being intimidated as fuck by Grand-Pa Messenger you've been mostly silent through the bizarre proceedings, but there's always somewhere to draw a line in, and that place is fucking sclera lenses.

"Nope," you sputter, drawing back from her palm like it's covered in piss.

"Oh, come _on!_ " she says, wiggling her palm enticingly in front of your nose. The containers smell like medical serum. "I know it sounds scary, but sclera lenses are _the bomb!_ You'll be the coolest little troll." She changes tack at your clear lack of enthusiasm. "These are the latest technology, you won't even feel them once they're on." 

"I ain't putting sclera lenses on and you can't make me," you squeak.

"Aw, don't be a _wiggler_ ," she brushes your refusal off, already unscrewing one of the containers open, and you slip off the platform and take shelter against the opposite wall, strategically located two steps away.

"Don't you _dare_ bring that thing any closer to me!" You wave the booklet at her, corner first. Man, at least in the Dark Hive they bothered to look contrite when plowing through your boundaries!

"It's just lenses, you giant smelly grub!" She wiggles the open containers in the air; you lunge for them with the booklet, but she somehow manages to evade the slapping motion without spilling a single drop of lens serum. "Look, I know you trolls like to keep your claws long and that probably freaks you out, but I can take mine off if you're scared of eye-poking! See?" She sets the containers down and _rips one of her own claws off_. 

You cover your face and start flat-out screaming. Oh god these fucking aliens. These fucking aliens are fucking crazy and you're stuck with them for _seasons_. She ripped out her own— you sob, you dare not uncover your eyes even though the booklet splayed over half your face is growing damp under your tears. You can't handle this bullshit, you want to go home, why don't you get to disguise yourself as an average cult orphan and live in an average hideout surrounded by other average cult orphans?

" _Calm your rumblespheres!_ " she shouts over your screaming, then rattles off some emphatic alienese under her breath, presumably cursing you out. "Sweet Sufferer on a crackerjack," she caps off her stream in admittedly good style, "it's like you never heard of fake claws!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH— _aaaah—_ ooh—" You manage to pause your freakout long enough to peek through your fingers at the woman. She's holding up an unharmed hand with flat, transparent claws, and on her other hand a set of fake claws in bright empress-pink. The set of her mouth is rueful, her eyebrows raised.

"If Horsey ever finds out I made you cry he'll _flatten_ me," she says, setting her fake claws down. "Now come over here."

"No," you shake your head minimally. Your face feels hollow and as crumpley as your phrasebook.

"Oh, what's your problem _now?_ " she sighs, dramatic and put-upon, almost as if _you're_ the one being unreasonable in the circumstances.

"No," you say again, stronger this time, "fuck you, fuck your lenses, fuck your claws — and incidentally fuck the fact that you went and ripped them out _before_ letting me know they were fake, by the way — fuck your hats, fuck your poultices, fuck your claw polish, fuck your Elder, fuck this whole place, fuck the place outside, fuck my being stuck here, fuck my having to leave, _fuck my life_ —" you open the tear-stained booklet, frantically flip through it until your eyes hit a word you recognize, "< _Monkee-poopee!!_ >"

"Oh, you did just _not!_ " she draws herself up, raises her chin, throws her shoulders back; her eyebrows come down and her eyes narrow as if she were trying to gather maximum levels of offended dignity. "I am regretting giving you that booklet _so hard_ right now, you _thing!_ "

"< _Clappee-trappee!!_ >" you go on, squinting at the wobbling code-print. (The booklet is shaking in your hands.) "< _Bahngam—gar—gom—_ >" You sputter and spray spit, bite your tongue and burst into tears again.

"Aw, gee, don't do that, it breaks my pump-cookie," she says, and you draw back into a corner when she stands up. "No, no, look!" She makes a grand display of capping the lenses and setting them on the piece of furniture sitting on the other side of your platform; then she circles around it toward you, very slowly, with tip-toeing steps, her declawed hands raised where you can see them. 

You've downgraded to sniffles by the time she stops, three steps away, and sits back down. "Can we talk?" she asks, gently.

"No lenses," you answer, flatly. You're feeling considerably more calm, enough to admit that the problem isn't even actually the fucking lenses, but if you've learned anything in your time in the cult is that a troll's gotta stick to their guns.

"Forget the lenses for a mo'," she says, patting the platform by her side. "I think we just got off on the wrong foot here. Let's take it from the top, mmkay?"

You condescend to sit down, but only as far away from her as the platform will allow. 

She raises an eyebrow at the free space between the two of you, but shrugs and makes no attempt at shortening the distance other than turning her ass around to face you head-on. 

"Well, see," she slaps her thighs a little, but unlike with Grand-Pa it comes across as her trying to kick-start her brain, "the thing is, erm, and don't let this freak you out, but!!" She wiggles her hands like she's massaging a very large ball in front of her face. "Geeze-wheeze, all our plans are a mess. We're early, everything is happening too soon. Honey. Sweet honey baby, you were always gonna visit us, eventually, like. It was already in the cards. We were getting ready. We had all these preparations underway from since like, forever ago."

She flaps her hands vaguely over her shoulder, like _forever ago_ was physically somewhere behind her. You just stare, not feeling very impressed. So even some random aliens had your life figured out for you— what else is new?

"But see, we were going to take this _slowly!_ " She insists, looking genuinely upset. "Let you meet Jake with all proper pomp and circumstance, he even had a trollsona prepared for just that occasion so he wouldn't startle you and all, explain about the being-an-alien stuff in a slow and sensible manner, sound you out on how you felt about a trans-galactic trip, let you know about the cool stuff you might get to see before hand..." She fiddles with a fake claw. "Do a couple day-long trips at your convenience, give you some cool alien trinkets— but that was all going to be in the future."

When she looks back up at you, she's sad, serious, and _young_.

"A sweep and a half in the future," she specifies. "That was when everyone involved was supposed to be _ready_. But hey, best laid plans, and all that good stuff." She shrugs, almost like she were dumping the sadness off. "So now that you're here, Jake just thought he could capitalize on the opportunity and get started on this stuff sooner. I think he was going to bring you stuff at first? But then he suddenly decided to give you the tourist treatment." She shrugs again.

You really wonder what in your words specifically pissed him off.

"Now granted," she goes on, "I _really_ don't think this is a fun place to be, it's a good hideout with a working internet connection but it's not all that staffed, and it would get _really_ lonely _really_ fast. Everyone here has a job to do, they couldn't all entertain you, and trust me, eventually you'd start feeling like you're in the way even when you're not." She grins. "I know I do, and I'm only ever here for serious work!" She sighs. "And that's the _crux_ of the problem— we can't always be here. He'd be out more often than in. He's not even around today, he won't be for nearly a week. I'm the only one who can come and go at a notice. Get it?"

"Not in the fucking least," you quip. "So there's, what, drama? And you guys trying to salvage a sweep and a half of plans at my expense, and your petty, bullshit workplace issues." You wave a dismissive hand. "So this place is boring— so _what?_ I can handle boring, I love boring, let me be bored. I've had excitement for a lifetime at this point. I'm not an attention-span-deprived wiggler who'll go around breaking shit. Just give me a room with a lock and a few novels to read and I'll be good to go."

"Sweet bleeding Vantas, that's literally the most depressing thing I ever heard," she says, stunned. "Dude, if you wanna be bored, you _can_ in fact go be bored somewhere way, way better than this. Like infinitely better. Don't just be okay with being miserable, man."

"Oh," you say, suddenly feeling stupid. Was that Grand-Pa's problem? That kind of mentality is also a thing in the caves if you think about it, where they cultivate a sort of grim "if we _must_ squat in a cave to live by our ideals, then by god we're gonna sweep this place and spread a doily and paint some curlicues on the wall" attitude — which also meant that sometimes a dude's gotta go and find a better cave — and some of them could get downright offended if you dragged your feet. Elder Charter was big on that.

"Yeah, see, and about that," she starts again, "If you do go anywhere else you're definitely gonna need a disguise for at least a few hours—"

"Oh, nonono—"

"Oh, yesyesyes! Commuting is a thing!" She bowls right over your protests. "The only place you can go to from here without being seen is _my_ laboratory, and that one gets actual government inspections. But if you put on a hat and a fake tan and a couple lenses you can just hang at my house with my descendant while the usual asshole inspects my booze locker for a couple hours. See?"

"W-well..." You side-eye the ominous containers on the miniature sliding storage unit. Put that way, a disguise doesn't sound _all_ that bad—

"And if you can do that, then you can follow Jake's _actual_ plan," she continues, and the bottom of your foodsack sinks preemptively. "Which is to get you a fake identity and an overseas passport and fly you in from an actual foreign country to hang at _his_ descendant's house! And don't worry—" she smiles, and it's an evil as fuck smile. "The place is _as boring as it gets_."

You wear the lenses. They turn your sclera white and your pupils ringed with brown around the center, and you sit and read your phrasebook and watch incomprehensibly alien internet movies all while wearing them, and until your eyes literally cannot take it anymore.

================ >




The _plan_ actually takes a whole damn lot of time, and admittedly you can tell they're being incredibly thorough. 

The alien woman — _Lalonde_ , apparently — keeps coming in with skin-coloring creams and armfuls of clothes for you to try on, mix and match, evaluate, then discard. She's not actually fucking around with the clothes; she has you stretch and move around in them to check for maneuverability and comfort, with and without skin cream, with and without the lenses, and keeps drawing sketches of you. Your fake identity, she explains, needs to conform to your disguising needs— it needs clothes that'll cover as much of you as possible (to save on cream and effort); the cream itself needs to be of a color that'll effectively disguise your natural gray without looking fake; and it needs headwear that'll cover your horns, as chopping them off is (whew!) out of question. 

Apparently the fashion avenues that cover all these points without being culturally dissonant and attracting undue attention are surprisingly narrow. 

The rust-red nurse seems to be in charge of teaching you alienese. When Lalonde is done he usually comes in with a book and some writing implements, and strikes simple conversations with you in both alternian and alien. After a couple hours of frantic wardrobe wrangling, his sessions are actually very restful.

"You don't have to learn much right now," he says, softly. Everything he says is said softly. "See, this planet is subdivided in many different geopolitical unities." He opens a map on your lap, the movement of his hands undulating and hypnotic, graceful. "They are usually geographically isolated, some of them for so long that their respective dialects have become mutually unintelligible." His fingers float over an expanse of oceans and rivers spread haphazardly between disorganized land masses, nothing like Alternia. "Your cover story includes this aspect, and you won't be expected to know more than some sketchy basics."

"What _is_ my cover story?" you ask, the frustration of a great many clothing swaps creeping into your voice.

"A skirmish between two political factions in an obscure unity," his fingers tap three spots on the map, "most likely from one of these locations, popularly believed to be more socially unstable than the rest of the planet. Most would not question a child refugee claiming to be fleeing from these places, certainly not in your target location." His finger moves to another spot on the map. "This territory is highly insular while projecting an image of welcome. The more powerful factions of its governing body have a vested interest in painting the rest of the planet as technologically or morally inferior, in order to curb its populace's growing dissatisfaction, and they make extensive use of official media for these purposes. This has given rise to misconceptions your cover can exploit." He then opens his hands palm up, so delicately one could almost miss the fact that it was a shrug. "Other than that, I cannot tell much," he says, his burgundy eyes regretful. "The details are still being worked out."

The details are finally worked out when Grand-Pa sweeps back into your block from wherever the hell he'd been stashed, arms open wide, one hand still holding his strange hat. Lalonde's scribbled fashion plates scatter in his wake. 

" _Indonesia!_ " he proclaims in his alien language, as if you had any idea what the word meant. " _Hindu-descended catholic city-hipster with a slightly goth aesthetic! Family is afraid of rising religious unrest!_ "

" _But conflicts have been on the low for a few years already,_ " Lalonde argues, brushing some of the drawings off a pile of fancy scarves. She didn't seem very committed to them, downright dubious even, and you damn hope Grand-Pa is making a case against them, because your biceps are cramping from wrapping and unwrapping and they sit weird on your horns.

" _Oh, like the average cracker has any fucking idea what goes on in Ethnic Non-whiteystan_ ," he retorts, slapping a captchalogue card on your sliding storage-container, and something about the way he pronounces the last couple of words makes you want to make yourself just a little bit smaller. " _If anyone asks we just say it's a very localized turf war, and his concerned middle-high class family decided to expedite his exchange program._ "

" _But why catholic and not just hindu? Seems overly complicated._ " To your relief, she starts stowing the pile of fancy scarves away.

" _You know people will feel inclined to be nicer to him if he's presented as a persecuted christian._ " He rests his hands on his back with a tired sigh, a faraway look on his face. " _And I hadn't even thought about how that's actually totally what he is,_ " he says, in a vaguely regretful tone.

" _But he's hardly a believer,_ " Lalonde says amid some mild snickering. " _And why not plain protestant anyway? I bet they'd swallow it, if we play the foreign customs card hard enough._ "

" _Maybe,_ " Grand-Pa nods, " _but the GPS and emergency communicator fit perfectly in the shape of a big fat cross, and there's no better excuse to have him wear it all the time and be defensive about it._ "

Lalonde shrugs and turns to you. 

"So how do you feel about angel lore and imagery?" she asks, thankfully in Alternian.

================>




Their overly elaborate plan goes thusly:

Documents under your name are created for a child belonging to a particular subgroup possessing this and that identifiable characteristics, because your name sounds a lot like the kind of name they get in their language, and the presumably stupid administraitors you'll be dealing with won't question it. This also influences what kind of skin tone cream you'll carry several pots of. (This is, according to Lalonde, so you won't stand there looking around everytime someone calls you "Carlos".)

You'll also be stated to ascribe to some particular religion, the group for which sometimes overlaps the previous group. Apparently, this religion and the main religion in the new location have a common origin, but diverged at some point, and your presumed geographic location caused further divergence— which means they'll feel somewhat connected to you, even if you mangle their messiah's name and forget who betrayed whom for what and who killed whom for however many bags of gold. 

This somehow affects the jewelry you'll wear. (According to Lalonde, you could have worn said jewelry without belonging to the religion, but someone got _really_ carried away in drafting a backstory to your "humansona". The religion thing mostly means your accessories function both as a cultural and a fashion statement. You don't care. You honestly don't give a shit.) It also means you have _carte blanche_ to make shit up in a pinch and pull the culture card, because your fake hatchland has a fuckton of different religions rubbing shoulders, mixing together, blurring into each other, and sometimes getting shirty with one another.

Which gives you the excuse to be here and not wherever you're supposed to belong. The religions are getting shirty again in your hive cluster, and your ancestors decided to send you off to this reportedly safer, richer, cooler, and also more exotic land.

However, it actually takes a fuckton of money to send a kid off to this land, and spending time in it will improve their status in adulthood. So basically your ancestors are handwringing highbloods who aren't actually in much danger, but were probably planning to send you off anyway and were loaded enough to hasten your departure out of hysteria.

Which means you get to be a spoiled little fashion-conscious hipster and wear the dumbest little horn-concealing hat. Your entire wardrobe revolves around matching your new collection of ugly bonnets. They've got bands on the inside to secure around your horns. 

They're barely any better than the scarves.

"I hate this," you tell Lalonde, very seriously, during your flight. It's a small airship, and you're the only ones in the sparsely furnished cubicle. She's varnishing your hand-claws with transparent gloss. Your humansona is supposed to be douchey enough to varnish his transparent claws yellow. (You have a collection of fake claws in different colors. This is your actual life.) "There's not a single part of this that is necessary."

"Don't sweat it so much," she says, even though she's the one who can still recognize herself in a mirror. "You won't have to leave the house very often, and you won't have to interact with anyone if you do. The weather is just way less horrible! It's cloudy and rains a lot, so you'll spare your eyes, but it's not actually _freezing_ , the hive is comfy, and people will stay out of your hair. And you'll get another kid to play with, won't that be fun?"

"No," you say. "I can't keep all this shit straight. What if they come and want to talk about what's his face? Jeejas? I don't remember fuckall about Jeejas. He died and shadow-droppers rose, right? Was he keeping the shadow-droppers back?"

"Probably!" Lalonde capped the varnish vial. "I really mean it, don't sweat the details. Jeejas was basically the Sufferer, only it was a cross instead of manacles. Honestly if you called him the Sufferer and quoted the Sufferer they would just assume you meant Jeejas because they had a pretty similar vibe. Some people don't like namedropping Jeejas either, think it's disrespectful, so there you have it."

"How do you even tie a dude to a flogging jut with a _cross_? That makes no fucking sense." You pick the big heavy pendant on your chest, look at it without really seeing. It's counterbalanced by a small locket with the image of a pompous-looking woman, currently poking the back of your neck. It's kind of tricked out, and you're supposed to press both arms for an emergency, and the bottom one for... fuck if you know. It's also a wi-fi hotspot, which you appreciate. (You don't know what the locket does.)

And then you take notice of the little guy sculpted on it.

" _Sweet Farting Condesce!_ " you blurt out. "If anyone back home sees this thing, they'll be sculpting tiny juts with me in them and I do _not_ want to deal with that, fuck no."

"You're a treasure," she says. "Speaking of farting Condesces though—"

She pulls out her cabinet modus, chooses a bottle seemingly at random, and breaks it on a nearby decorative platform. (You knew it was going to happen but you still jump. You always do.)

Out comes a familiar booklet.

"It seems the one I gave you before was a little..." she coughs slightly, "...outdated. The curses are kind of, erm, out of fashion. But this one is up to date, potty mouth guaranteed or your money back! And now—" she breaks another bottle; you jump again— "here, put on your glasses; it's going to be _sunny_ outside."

She slides on her dark pair, immediately looking like a glamorous spy; you put on your amber ones and feel like a tool. An uniformed servant comes and says something in alienese, Lalonde nods and buckles herself in. You follow suit, feeling very awkward and alarmed.

After a few harrowing minutes, during which you were convinced the vessel was going to crash nose first, you're finally free. 

"This is your halfway point," she says, as you unbuckle and tug nervously at your clothes. "Your trip actually consists of two flights, and you'll be slipping into your second one like you actually came out of your first. Get it?"

You nod, even though you still don't get what she's going on about. 

The door opens with a nasty gust of hot air; it really is overly bright outside, and you squint behind both sets of lenses as you trundle down the stairs. Lalonde grips your hand like you could fly away if unsupervised. 

As you both descend, you recognize Grand-Pa solemnly ascending, clad in a strangely cut, monochrome attire; down at the landing, the stairs are surrounded by obvious guards and a small gaggle of other old people waving at him with fake smiles.

No one directs a single look at you. Grand-Pa twitches his mouth-fur twice, but walks past without acknowledging your presence. Eyes stare straight through you and Lalonde as you power-walk past waving old people and constipated-looking attendants, black cars, machinery, bustling servants, carts, until you find yourself inside a chilly, climatized building absolutely overflowing with aliens.

They weren't kidding about the skin tones, or the clothes. 

Somehow Lalonde manages to drag you through a gaggle of noisy, overly-animated aliens without you being touched by a single one of them, jumps over cords she obviously shouldn't cross, strides confidently past armed guards, and then finally stops by a miraculously empty collection of seats, one of which you immediately claim. 

You're shaking. Your pumpmuscle is fluttering like a spastic moth. This place is freezing. It only just hit you that you are surrounded by damn aliens.

It's like being in public with your mutation, but infinitely more alarming.

"I wanna go back to the frozen place," you manage to strangle out somehow.

"Don't tell anyone," she says, misinterpretating your cold sweat and fanning you with a booklet, "but the frozen place sucks balls. You'll be so glad to not be there. Ooh!" She thankfully pauses in her fanning, looking into the throng of people. "There's our _contact_."

That word piques your interest, possibly because you're a sucker. You look around for this secret slaygent.

Some gum-chewing kid detaches from a nearby throng of noisy commuters and swaggers up, dressed exactly like you from the top of his baggy hat to the bottom of his over-buckled boots, down to the very buttons of his striped waistcoat. The only exception is a bulky pair of portable hearing apparatuses, worn with the hoop cradling the back of his head; he nods along to the song as he approaches, looking overwhelmingly punchable.

That's you now. That's exactly how punchable _you_ look. That's exactly how they chose to make you look unpleasant and unapproachable to curious aliens and oh my god that's a wig and it's so _shitty_ , it should not be possible for hair to look so obviously like a wig but there it is, it's a fucking obvious wig and you hate your life—

"Yo," your facsimile blows a grey bubble, ambles up to Lalonde and offers a fist, which she bumps with all due dignity. "Hey there, dude," he mumbles and nods discreetly at you, thankfully not making any fist-bumping overtures; instead he takes off his hat and the shitty wig — and the hair underneath is colored and styled _just like yours_ , the asshole — and carefully tugs the hearing apparatuses off.

"There you go," he hands them over, and just gives a single silent nod as you hold them in confusion. "Dr. Dre-approved. Nobody'll try to talk to you in those, the sight of them straight up screams 'sick fires ongoing, hellacious beats all up ins, can't touch this, do not pass go, too bootylicious for you—'"

Lalonde kicks his shin slightly, just enough to get his attention.

"—anyway, I hope you enjoy your soundtrack," he nods stoically to himself. "Selected by yours truly."

And then he turns around and attempts to disappear into the crowd, but is just sort of run over and dragged along instead.

"He's a riot," Lalonde follows his botched departure with misty eyes. "I'm so _proud_. But yeah, you just go and show this paper to that guy in the blue shirt over there—" she points to some guy getting situated behind a small counter "—and they'll let you through that door straight into the vessel. Just search for seat 12-A, it should be easy to find, it's by a window and it'll be labelled in Cult Code! I mean, Cult Code is just our alphabet anyway, so—"

"What!?" you blurt out, staring wide-eyed at her glasses. "Since when!?"

"Since always!" she laughs. "What better code than an alien language? Though I guess I mean 'always' as in 'since we made contact', which I suppose wasn't actually that long ago, less than a century, even. I still think we should have gone with Chinese, but I wasn't around to give an opinion back then, and it's all going to be a moot point soon enough, so meh. Oh, look!" she points at a small line of humans gathering at the counter. "Guess it's time to say bye!"

You haven't even begun processing the ramifications of that first sentence, much less the last, when she slaps your shoulder and nods almost as stoically as your departed body double.

"You do you, buddy," she says. "Put on those cans and have a nice flight."

"Y-you— you're not coming with?" you squeak, clutching the "cans" for dear life.

To your surprise, her ears go pink. "Oh man!" she says. "Oh god! No, Jesus God, that would be so awkward." She brushes a pale curl back in a nervous gesture. "Hehe, so awkward. Wow. Anyway!" She slaps your shoulder again, much more heartily this time, and pushes you towards the line. "Off you go!"

She waves cheerfully as you move down the line, but between you showing the guard your paper and turning back to her, she's completely vanished. You walk into the much more crowded vessel, somehow manage to find your seat; you put on the muffling doctor-approved ear cans and suddenly remember your small sculpture of Alien Sufferer was supposed to double as a music player.

You click on the bottom leg of your cross and stare out the window, watching the alien landscape shrink away and trying to get your bloodpumper's thump to match the soothing beat. 


	4. > Nights in the past (but not many)

You are a Junior Investigarrotier (on probation), and you are standing at your first ever crime scene. 

You literally cannot believe you're here. Any moment now, the nervous, sullen Detextirpator outside will jump in and reveal this entire exercise as a Comedy Periphery sketch, and you'll be culled to a laugh track. Still, you try not to shake too obviously, lest some hidden camera happens to be broadcasting you to the entire galaxy. This is your only chance.

You fell one single point behind the minimum acceptable skillset evaluation. Your fate should have been the fork; unexpectedly, a Junior Inquisitormentor, who happened to be making a surprise inspection of that particular pre-adult platformation, stepped in on your behalf.

He claimed to have seen in you the kind of hidden potential a standardized test couldn't hope to detect. He also happened to know of an unsolved case on the surface which he, as an adult, did not have permission to personally inspect; it would be perfect to measure your true observational abilities in the field, he believed.

No battles or chases would be necessary, he assured, to your relief; you were to thoroughly investigate the crime scene, take pictures of every single cranny and corner, take note of even the most irrelevant detail, and report back. Your efforts would aid his own investigation of a dangerously seditious criminal organization spread throughout the galaxy. Thus, after passionately kissing his boots in thanks, you were shipped back down to this sleepy hivecluster to pick your way through a ransacked lawnring.

You have so much preliminary information on this scene, it's ridiculous. Adult investigarrotiers really do work on an entirely different level.

According to your debrief, a group of trainee threshecutioners was deployed to this hivecluster to cull an illegal mutant, as well as any possible seditious contacts he may have had, and to thoroughly investigate the mutant's connections and belongings. They were all fitted with special communicators and a scuttlebuggy, all of which were being monitored by location for security purposes.

And according to the location monitoring, after fucking around in this hive and outside for some time, the group split and moved towards several different locations without telling headquarters why or where. Two-thirds of them stopped moving once reaching their respective destinations; they wouldn't answer summons, and are believed dead. 

Other junior investigarrotiers were, like you, deployed to these mystery locations under heavy escort. That's a lot of competition for you. Time to perform a stellar job with cunning and alacrity.

You pull out your special grub-camera and take a bunch of pictures of everything around you, the favorite part of your job. A beautiful close-up of all the broken crockery, sparkling under a special filter. The cool battle marks on the wall, with special attention to the texture. The half-rotted corpse on the floor with a lance still in (you take several, from all sorts of angles). 

After some extra thinking, you trace a pointless chalk outline around the corpse and take even more pictures.

You then pull out your portable grubtronic note-taking device. Time to write a sparkling report on all the clues around you, and sound really smart about it.

There are signs of, (you bite your tongue in thought) severe messification. Some of witch, are believeled to be from the ~~trashies~~ (you think better of it)  trashiescushioners, that were investigarriotiering be four me being here, (nailed it) but some of witch, are believeled to be from a great battle, witch took the place here, possibelly after the trashercushioners misteriously went to places without telling why or where (you checked your written brief for that turn of phrase). There is a decomposting ~~corpse~~ (is that right? It looks so short, it can't be right)  corpiser (better), witch is stabbed with a lance weapoin, as the pictures ~~show~~ (what's a bigger word for show?)  demonesterate (nailed it). I am here-four going to climb up the stairs to the upstairs to investigate the other places that are to be found here in this hive (is this professional enough? Probably not) witch I am currently investigating (nailed it).

Upstairs is boring. There's no corpses. Still, you take pictures of everything, from up close, from afar, from all corners, of all corners, of the upended ablution trap, into the collapsed load gaper, and under the computer plateau where the shadows look particularly interesting. Then you dutifully write your impressions down to the most irrelevant detail, as per orders.

~~In the upstairs level~~ (needs to be more formal)  In the level of up the stairs, the Investigarrotier (you're so proud to write that) takes note of more messification. There are many scraches on the wall, as if from a pointed (shit, what's a formal word for "thing"?!) objection. The scraches have ~~ripped~~ (needs zazz!)  rippedified, many ~~movie posters~~ (zazz!!) wall scrolls, of cinematogaroficious (fuck!) personagion (nailed it), by witch, the Investigarrotier (you grin to yourself) is made to reach the conclusion of, the illegal mutant who dwellowed in this hive was ~~obisessioned with movies~~ (no that's boring)  exerchanged criminal codes of seditionous personagion via codes witch used the cinematogarfoficious means of witch this Investigarrortier (yeah!) mentioned be four. (Fucking nailed it!) The Investigarrotier is believed, of this current hippotesius, because of the many ~~words and drawings~~ (no)  grammatics and picturegraphics, witch are placated over them, as if coding a code. (God _damn_ , you're on a roll!)

Still... It looks a bit short. You're pretty sure a real professional report needs at least more than one page. You climb down the stairs slowly, looking around in hopes of something irrelevant to talk about, but nothing looks interesting at all. It's just a bunch of stuff lying around being broken and sharp and stuff, and the wall being full of marks from what was probably some epic flailing around with weapons.

The most interesting and mysterious thing in the whole hive is the dead body, which is why you decide to poke it a little more. It's probably got all sorts of incredibly important, irrelevant clues to reveal and write down in impressive words, right? The assailant (assailor?) even left their weapon behind. That's got to be an important clue, right?

The weapoin, witch the assailor used, and witch was forgottened be hind in his or her exitte, is a lance, as this investigarrotier has wroten down be four in this report witch you are now currentely reading. It is a very ~~tall~~ (short words no no!) ~~long~~ (still short!)  longiferous lance, by witch characasterstistic, this Investigarrotier thought to be considerding the possibiletty, that the welder of this weapoin of this crime was ~~tall~~ (aHEM)  of the longiferous personagion, witch may be a important clew for the identification, of this criminal seditionous element. (Element is a good word for criminal. It makes you sound extra professional at crimes.)

Well, that's enough about the lance. You turn your camera to the stinking corpse for a few more beauty shots, and are in the middle of a series of excitingly extreme-angle pictographs when you take notice of one more irrelevant detail, which is sure to sweeten your already epic report:

In the late trashercusioneres ~~hand~~ graspclaw, he is ~~holding~~ graspclawing the weapoin of his porfession, witch is a trasher, or a sicler, as is the won't of trashercushioners, and in the blade of his trasher, the Investigarrotier witch is currenly on the scene, has taking notice of the fact, that there is dried blood, of the brown personagion in the blade. The investigarrotier there four, raises the possibilletty, from this clew that the element witch is responsible for this crime, had what is known in the field of investigarrotierting, is known as a Crony.

Your report is on fire. On. Fucking. _Fire._

================>

You are the most Senior Investigarrotier in this Pre-Adult Evaluation and Transfer Spaceship Platformation, and you just received a completely fucking illegible report.

Frankly the report doesn't even matter, except as a particularly effective comedy piece. You forward it to the Junior Imperial Inquisitormentor currently on site in hopes it'll sweeten his mood.

The pictures are a different thing, both in terms of usefulness and quality. That cadet had talent, and it was unfortunate that it wasn't in the field of investigarrotierring (or really of anything that required writing). You select a few of the more relevant-looking ones -- close-ups on the weapons and wounds, and of creepy wall-scrawling -- and send them in a bundle, again, to the Inquisitormentor.

The rest, you upload to an anonymous site you happen to enjoy. They're pretty dang cool, and hey, as long as you make sure there isn't any particular clue to their origin, that's all they'll be: a bunch of cool pics of a ransacked hive and a dead dude. 

================>

You are a cunning, promising, particularly ambitious Junior Inquisitormentor, appointed by Imperial Fiat to investigate the pathetic crawlings of a bunch of deluded maggots currently polluting the sanctity of the home planet.

Imperial Fiat may be too strong a term to describe your appointment. By Imperial Fiat, someone was appointed to handle all deluded maggots of this ilk however long ago, and was also granted Imperial Fiat to appoint anyone they believed were necessary for the cause. Some of these were also, in turn, granted Imperial Fiat to appoint their own underlings. 

You were only recently appended to the bottom of this chain of proxy-imperial-fiat; a latecomer, an underling for a thousand underlings' underlings. But lowblood scum need not know that. You will and have wielded the strength of this term to its fullest.

You know you were appointed because you're in somebody's way -- knowledge that brings you satisfaction, but doesn't mitigate the danger.

When you're dealing with forbidden knowledge and those who seek it, it's nearly impossible not to come in contact with the censored material yourself. Common sense dictates that those in charge of its apprehension and expunging be granted amnesty as a matter of practicality, and this amnesty, too, may be granted by Her Imperious Condescension via Imperial Fiat. 

But the wording of your appointment, though it granted you authority to command imperial resources, did not grant you permission to access restricted material. You suspect there are two chains of Imperial Fiat at work, one of which is used without the other to weed out overly competent upstarts like yourself. 

It's not like you get to complain. Imperial Fiat by definition means "for the heck of it", and if your superiors decided to appoint you for the heck of it without giving you clearance for the heck of it and then kill you for the heck of it, then they were given the authority to do so for the heck of it, and that's just the way it is. But it doesn't mean you must meekly present your neck; even in this game for the heck of it, they must make a show of following rules, and therefore so will you.

For example, young as you are, you're still an adult. Your appointment doesn't say you get to flaunt laws. So you do not step into the den of sedition yourself; instead, you send in a convenient patsy to take the brunt of the crime.

Your patsy sends back a beautiful report. You recover her severed head; anything that brings a smile to your face, you honor in your own personal way. 

Your patsy also sends back a gorgeous set of pictographs, possibly a bit too gorgeous for your needs. After all, your report must be absolutely clean of forbidden imagery, even as it provides the answers they require; a fine line to tread, hanging over an abyss, which you must dance over with a parasol and aplomb for both your life and your pride.

So, for the wall writings, you select those in which they were aesthetically blurred-- just enough to be hard to read, but not enough that some image editing wouldn't clear them up. Your superiors may do so as they see fit; your eyes shall be ostensibly spared of their content. 

The ones with the dead threshecutioner, you send as they are. Not much to do or hide about those.

In a separate, more secure message, you send the mirthful report and the same pictures to your previous superior, a Senior Inquisitormentor of particular influence and power. She is your overseer, your master, and your matesprit; if all else fails and you are culled regardless, you know you'll be avenged, because she has sworn as much.

She has no leave to know any of this, but you don't care and neither does she. 

================>

You are The Most Augusteo Pagliako Grimoldy, Eminent in the Righteous Motherfucking Tent of all 'Em Tents of the Supratentional Arm of the Galaxy, and you still can't believe Picatrix of the Messiahs turned her Ceremonial Honknose of Mirth and Joy all up on you. 

You can't believe she did it, and you can't believe she didn't not only not do the same to some half-tried barely outta pupahood Junior Inquisilittletourmaliney -- pah!, you mentally spit at the role -- , but she straight up all and went and let the squirt invade her red quadrant like a most criminalicious and rude little enemy vessel. The sheer cheek of this bastard to get in turf that by rights shoulda been yours!

You had been at an upright loss after being tossed a warm clue to a cold case of the heresies most contagious, and what a sweet little miracle sign did the Messiahs not all up and send you, but along with sweet little Picatrix's angry-ass email telling you to get off her boytoy's case?

Well, let this be a test of his worth, you told yourself, tossing the clue at him. Let him show you what's he's all up and about, and if you happen to judge him for what he is which is _unworthy_ , then you have the most convenient excuse to procure paint of a nobler hue, in the name of the Empire and of Mirth and in the name of Picatrix's scarlet pail.

Now you sit breathless in front of your grubtop, grinning and ready to declare him sullied and infected and heretic and-- but oh, the little motherfucker is canny. He straight up opens his missive by saying he did not have leave to touch heresies and so didn't. 

Well, you can still ostensibly deem him too incompetent to serve the empire. His report is damn clear about his every one step, though, and that makes it dang harder to just pull out a culling order on your say-so. Woulda been easier if the little shit were straight up within reach of your claws -- you'd all of just crush him and then shrug at the haters like you didn't mean no bad -- but all the way in Alternia as he is, and him being a fellow purple under Picatrix and parasitizing her quadrants as is, there's no way you can get it done no questions asked. Damn.

You scour the report for a fatal mistake you can pin on him. He kept his little ass on the platform what with being an adult, and all subtle-like asked for written permission to step off of it. Ha! If you could only order him to jump off head-first. He took over temporary command of the platform, but rather than interrupting its oh-so-vital evaluation schedule, he had the Evaluatorminators select cadets among the not-yet-legally adults to go back down and do the job under his specifications.

His specifications were thorough. He pinpointed the target's dwelling location with crazy accuracy somehow, but still ordered the summary culling of a wide radius of pupas just in case the sign and location were a decoy for an innocent-seeming little neighbor. When them cadets dropped all dead without warning he had the Evaluatorminators culled for incompetence and sent in another little batch of cadets, this time Investigarrotiers; his report is basically their conclusions, as well as a request for permission to step on-planet and peep on heresies in person.

This motherfucker is just too smart for his own damn good. Makes all this shit sound so damn clever and reasonable, fuck, you can't let your superiors see this. You just can't.

They might agree and let him go on living.

But you're cleverer. Oh you're so much more cleverer. You gonna fake the shit out of this damn report, Messiahs witness you; you write something incompetent enough -- not _too_ incompetent, after all, you named him in and it reflects on you -- and though you don't know how to turn it into the fancy file with the borders and shit you just go and screencap them and photosharp-miracles 'em right into the file. 

Then you shrink all the pictures to nearly thumbnail size, just to make him seem like too troublesome an underling to bother with. Hehehe.

You send the file up and away and giggle all the way back to your coon.

================>

You are the tealblooded secretancillary of a very important, very powerful, very busy troll, and your only job is to organize and manage every single facet of his job that pertains to restricted information.

Basically, you deal with censored and heretic material on a nightly basis, stuff that would have even the most pompous violetblood culled on the spot. Many would let such power get to their heads, but you're simply too terrified and, weirdly enough, too proud to let it.

Someday, you're going to know too much, and you dread that day. Yet, you are unable to comprehend the notion of not doing your job until that day comes. It makes you a very competent nervous wreck.

You are currently very nervously checking your inbox.

Oh shit. Oh damn. Look, it's an email from Pagliako. You hate that guy, you have to rewrite everything he submits. He also treats you like crap. Of all the people to have under your superior's working cell, it had to be that dumb meathead clown. It's embarrassing just to know him.

Oh damn. Oh bother. It's a freaking doc-writer file with the official imperial heading pasted in off-center. This kind of stuff makes your food-sac ache just to look at. Just, just _look_ at the thing. 

Oh bother. Oh shit. He's claiming to actually be a Junior Inquisitormentor reporting in from Alternia. A Junior Inquisitormentor whose cadence and quirks are completely identical to Pagliako's very own, of course!

The file isn't even edit-locked. It isn't even the right kind of file for an official document. He didn't even know how to add page numbers, they're all the same one pasted into every single page along with the official bottom markup. This kind of thing makes your food-sac burn just to look at. How can someone be so _incompetent_ at falsifying? 

(Part of your job includes detecting counterfeits. You hold a great deal of professional respect for counterfeiters, and bad copies offend you on their behalf.)

Oh shit. Oh _damn_. This Junior Inquisitormentor is Picatrix's new matesprit. You should have realized. Of course Pagliako would let his weird obsession get in the way of the job and assign the poor kid just for the sake of getting rid of him. What does he even see in her? What do the _both_ of them see. She's built like a freighter and as scarred as a planetoid in a meteorite belt, and could probably bench-press twenty indigobloods before breakfast. She constantly grimaces, all the time, a straight-up, hands-down, stone-carved goddamn grimace filled with sharp yellowed teeth and bumpy gums, and her hair always looks to have been cropped up short by a blunt knife. Once you saw her clench her fist, like, she was mildly angry at something for some reason, you don't really remember why, but her sleeve spontaneous ripped all the way up to the shoulder along the seam. You still see it in your nightmares.

You'd hate to be caught in the ongoing drama. Hopefully Picatrix will limit her vortex of destruction to Pagliako's own, and leave your office be. You doubt even your superior could fend her off with minimum casualties.

You scroll down the collection of badly shrunken images and wonder if Pagliako knows that the empire's official suite of imaging programs appends an unique ID to any image it edits, allowing those with the appropriate permissions -- such as you -- to verify where the image passed through and who touched it. Well, you don't wonder as such. Of course he has no idea. But you wonder what kind of face he would make if he were ever to find out.

You'd hate to be the one to inform him, but. He's kind of obstructing the law in some very literal ways and you're going to have to get the original report and the original pictures out of him somehow.

You send a polite email praising the amusement value of his joke and asking for the _real_ report, then settle down to clean up that sad batch in the meantime. It's long and tiring work, done in between bursts of secretancillarying. The office doesn't stop just because Mister Pagliako is feeling uncooperative!

His first response arrives when you're finally running down the standard censorsnipping recognition filters, and is a very rude and downright threatening questioning of your questioning; he wants to know why you think the report is fake. You enumerate the many reasons and then go back to your job, only to find that the filters returned a very important, very _telling_ positive.

It's an ancient lance that literally could not exist.

You can't claim to have a whole lot of knowledge on the history behind the prohibitions you uphold; all you do know is that they involve old rebellions espousing anti-imperial and biologically unnatural notions, through which their remnants tend to give themselves away. But...

This "Lance of the Summoner" is Super-S class forbidden iconography, and the mention of its name alone warrants summary culling. Its depiction was censored from all historical documents, its making erased from all instruction manuals, its plans deleted from all manufactocullery files; some of the materials required are still officially tracked and restricted. To forge a real one should be straight up impossible, and even a replica, after such long censorship, could not possibly be this faithful. 

What's really blowing your mind, however, is that this filter is literally the most ancient one available to the entire empire, and hasn't accused this particular positive for nearly as long as the adult restriction has been in place. 

You don't even check Pagliako's second response. You're freaking the fuck out; you're forwarding this entire thing to your superior, counterfeiting stupidity and all, and letting these clowns sort their shit amongst themselves. 


	5. > wwhy yes i am CG an also a blitherin idiot.txt

CA: so there ya have it  
CA: latitude longitude and depth hope its glubbin clear!  
CA: now cmon what kinda surprise is it cmon cmon  
CG: it would not be a surprise if i told you.  
CA: whale poopity ya caught me reeled me right in he he he glub glub glub  
CA: so how is it been going dude *me punches ya in the shoaulder all buddy buddy like*  
CA: hey  
CA: hey hey hey hey  
CA: heeeeeeeeeeey  
CA: dude ya bein all clammed up like this is just wave unlike ya   
CA: yallways available for shootin da shit with your bettas usually whats this sudden rebellious seabullshit  
CG: my apologies.  
CA: ya havvent even called me lord once 2nite  
CG: i am otherwise occupied.  
CG: lord.  
CA: high lord  
CG: high lord.  
CA: snappertail!!!!  
CG: snappertail.  
CA: I MEAN HIGH LORD SNAPPERTAIL YA SCUMBLOODED BRAINFEEBLE PIECE A SHIT WHY ARE YOU NOT PERFORMING THE PROPER OBEISANCES   
CG: i beg your forgiveness.  
CG: high lord snappertail.  
CA: i forgive you <3  
CG: i have not been myself today.  
CA: i noticed  
CA: now  
CA: what the hell manner a occupation could possibly be more important than entertaining a lord a the seas EXPLAIN ME THISSSSS  
CG: you are correct.  
CG: i am chastised.  
CA: good!!!!!!!! =>:´V~  
CA: as you SHOAULD be, like bein in a shoaul  
CA: shoal  
CA: suddenly im not entirely sure how thats spelled  
CG: shoal.  
CA: thank  
CA: so hey what was yall occupied with before like  
CG: i am attempting to converse with adios toreador.  
CA: is he prattlin at ya again   
CA: that stupid MUSCLEHEAD  
CG: yes.  
CA: I KNEW IT  
CA: talkin around at ppl when i aint given him permission to communicate  
CA: then disappearin in his STUPID joggin runs for upwards a HOURS  
CA: and not soundin the least bit sorry  
CA: aint gonna lie keepin up a kismesissitude with someone what dont obey their bettas is frustratin fuckin work  
CA: like DUDE are ya even tryin here  
CA: like DAMN  
CG: you are entirely correct.  
CA: why cant ya be good and just DO LIKE I TELL YA  
CG: is that not the truth.  
CA: so this asshole can't even do a proper kismesissitude  
CA: instead he just laughs when i tell him to meet me armed at the field a battle  
CA: then says its the point when i complain whats he even think hes doing for fucks sake  
CG: hear.  
CA: if only he werent so hot  
CG: true.  
CA: have ye been eyein my kismesis ya sneaky asshole  
CG: i did not mean to imply such a thing.  
CA: nah its cool ha ha whats a little oglin between friends *i punch you in the shoaulder again lightly all friendly like*  
CA: i mean cmon its not like i aint hella proud a those thick meaty legs a his `>(`°p°´)<´~~~ *then i do a little drool)  
CA: i mean *  
CA: toreador knows what hes been doin wwrestlin all them sirloinbeasts yum  
CA: ill let ya look  
CA: but only look  
CA: cuz you my good ol buddy carcin ogenet  
CG: thank you.  
CA: ha ha ha awwww what is a little pervin between friends  
CA: and whale your weird hemonemonimity notwithstandin i must admit ta hold ya in the HIGHEST regard among all lowblood dirtscrapin lawnsquatters  
CA: ya aint so bad dude  
CG: thank you.  
CA: and your selfies are aight  
CA: more than aight man  
CA: ya pretty FINE for a peasant if ya get my meanin  
CG: i am incredibly flattered.  
CA: sea man this is what i mean  
CA: ya knoww how ta accept flattery  
CA: an insults when they come ta it  
CA: unlike certain beef-wrasslin' SHITBLOODS i coulda be naming right now  
CA: ahem ahem  
CG: it is nothing.  
CA: what im meanin here is and i dont wanna be soundin pushy about it or anyfin but  
CA: you and me man  
CA: i think we could make somefin positive come outta it  
CA: >>;´p)  
CG: i am truly,  
CG: truly very fl.  
CG: that is to say.  
CG: i am very flattered.  
CG: high lord snappertail.  
CG: i may require time to ponder this sudden development.  
CA: aww shucks  
CA: no pressure  
CA: i mean this is way betta a response than all those times before when ya kept findin reasons why a romance wwould be a bad idea lol  
CA: made a troll outright consider whether such blatant refusal of a superiors attention counted as C A L I G I N O U S overtures glub glub ~.^ <3<  
CG: one of my stature could never presume to challenge the elite of the elite.  
CG: i can only beg forgiveness for being unworthy of your advances.  
CA: aw man see here tho  
CA: this RIGHT HERE tho man  
CA: THIS  
CA: this is a lowblood wwho TRULY understands their place  
CA: gracious humility all up in here kinda thing  
CA: ya a TREASURE in the mud  
CA: a pearl secreted among landdweller filth  
CA: gleamin from the scummy puddles a lowblood seawage in their nasty dry little lawns  
CA: fertilized by their noxious improperly disposed biological waste  
CA: do lowwbloods have load gapers  
CG: yes.  
CA: huh  
CA: ya know i had no idea i thought they just tossed their shit outta the window like in historical dramas  
CA: but then i thought naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah carcin is a class act his flower would never bloom in such pestiferous environments  
CA: sure makes it easier i guess tho  
CA: to like reach out  
CA: pluck it up   
CA: an reel it in reel careful to where it can be betta displayed <3  
CA: ya know ya know C;[<  
CA: but hey ya asked for some ponderin time so nah don't answer just yet  
CA: plenty a time grubby >;-V  
CG: thank you.  
CA: in da meantime tho  
CA: ya up for some ~*roollllplayin*~?   
CA: for old times sake  
CA: itll tide me by  
CA: while ya do all that ponderin  
CA: cmon dude  
CA: cmon cmon  
CA: cmon  
CA: cmoooooooon  
CA: heeeeeey  
CA: hey dude cmon lets roleplay  
CA: heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey  
CG: apologies.  
CG: i have been suffering from interruptions.  
CG: i have been approached by centaurs testicles.  
CA: who dat  
CA: sounds like a nastyass sweaty perv with a hoofbeast fetish  
CA: ignore him  
CG: as you wish.  
CG: and yes i will roleplay with you.  
CA: yaaaaaaay yay yay yay carcinininin  
CA: carcin ogenet  
CA: mon amiiiiiiiiii  
CA: yeah okay so ive got a promising scenario here  
CA: okay so  
CA: okay soooo  
CA: my self-propelled air-scooting device malfunctioned   
CA: while i was busy surveying lowblood lawrings from above  
CA: i was lookin for a good spot for a FLARP fortress  
CA: but now  
CA: i must look for a safe spot to spend the day  
CA: dun dun duuun  
CA: i stumble outta my wreckage like a badass outta hell  
CA: covered in smolderin ashes and my authentic military trenchcoat on fire  
CA: i stride all dignified-like past shitty miserable hovels with unwatered lawns and sewage mounds from unhygienic loadgaperless trash  
CA: my sniffnode raised high to avoid the fumes AND to show the gaunt little faces peeking out the windows just who is boss  
CG: i peek out shyly and admiringly out of a window, enchanted by your refined highblooded poise.  
CA: outta the corner a my little eye i spy whale what is this? a small but CLEAN face peekin out at me from some hive  
CA: the lawn in this hive is watered and there is MINIMAL sewage and my interest  
CA: it is piqued  
CA: i approach the cleanish hive  
CG: i take notice of your approach.  
CG: my pump bladder is set aflutter.  
CG: i am honored to have such a distinguished member of the aristocracy threading so purposefully upon my dutifully albeit amateurishly watered lawn.  
CG: however i am also besotted with fear, for this illustrious visitor could at any moment lay his justice upon me.  
CG: and i would be helpless before him.  
CA: ha ha wow, woooooow  
CA: good shit man you a true pro  
CG: thank you.  
CA: you know this reminds me of aracny  
CA: sweet lil aracny  
CA: to be quite frank aracny drives me batty with her uncastelike behavior  
CA: im like no honey youre supposed to be fierce and threatenin like  
CA: but she just like ducks her face all shy an coy and dances in the fields makin flower crowns or waterever being a meeky lil ship singin in da highlands  
CA: and its like  
CA: come ON that ships for lowbloods or somefin  
CA: like how come adiost got this ship figured out and ya dont did yall flip castes on hatchin or somefin  
CA: a blueblood shoulda be my KISMESIS not my moirail aint it true  
CG: yes.  
CA: glad you agree  
CA: anyway please stop leadin us on tangents here  
CA: we are in the middle of a thing  
CG: forgive me.  
CA: forgiven  
CA: so  
CA: i stride up to the entrance my authentic military trenchcoat flarin open around me gently licked by its small crash-induced conflagrations  
CA: the light of one such conflagration on my shoaulder illuminates my face from the side in a mysterious an threatenin way when you open the door to receive me  
CG: my high lord.  
CA: yes peasant  
CG: i fear it must be said.  
CG: god moding is bad form.  
CA: oh  
CG: you cannot make someone elses character act out of turn.  
CA: sorry  
CG: it is merely a symptom of lack of experience.  
CG: time and usage will hone your skills.  
CA: youre too kind  
CG: it is but the truth.  
CG: let us continue.  
CA: yes yes  
CG: seeing your magnificent form stride so intently toward the entrance of my humble hovel, i am quick to draw the logical albeit unbelievable conclusion.  
CG: you desire entry in my hive.  
CG: i stumble toward the door in haste, for a lord of such stature must not be made to wait.  
CA: good shit  
CG: tremblorously i deactivate the intruder alert lock and pull upon my primitive wall-transposing device.  
CG: behind its rough surface your refined and dignified visage offers a startling contrast.   
CG: the slope of your noble nose is contoured by the discreet conflagration upon your shoulder, and its startlingly violent orange glow bathes your softly violet cheek.  
CA: i say peasant  
CA: my night has been unpleasant  
CA: do not add ta it   
CA: like some shitty pheasant  
CA: i brush past you like a troll what knows what he wants and into your hive  
CG: i stumble back in surprise. your flaming trenchcoat softly brushes me.  
CG: my sniffnodes are filled with the scent of fire and the sea.  
CG: belatedly i close the entrance behind you and speak.   
CG: what is your desire my lord.  
CA: yeah so your hive is the closest ta livable in this shithole so ill be stationed in it until my new vehicle is delivered  
CA: so prepare your coon for me and i hope you got some decent whale fillet or well have a problem is that clear peasant  
CG: i tremble in my bared feet.  
CG: for whale fillet is a gastronomical delicacy of the loftiest degree, which i in the misery of my ill-managed lowblood savings could have never in my life dreamed of acquiring.  
CG: with my finger i poke one of the many holes in my thoroughly washed albeit old and worn garment.  
CG: i fear the impending consequences of this inadequacy.  
CA: whale? im waiting kiddo wheres my food  
CG: i cower before the intensity of your inquiry.  
CG: i cannot bear to put off my punishment for much longer.  
CG: i have it not milord.  
CG: i have it not.  
CA: WWHAT YOU SAY!!!  
CG: i am sorry. i have not whale fillet milord.  
CG: all i have are these humble doloritos, and orange faygo from the church.  
CA: sweet flippin cod i canNOT believe this. the NERRRRRVE  
CA: do ya even understand the honor it is to receive one of my ILLUSTRIOUS line? you shoaulda be kissin my feet for blessin your shitty hive with the GIFT A MY PRESENCE  
CA: and YET  
CG: i am honored milord.  
CA: all i get is UNGRATEFULNESS  
CG: i am honored. and grateful.  
CA: then kiss my fuckin feet ya piece a shit  
CG: i lower myself to my knees before you and lay my hands on my hard uncarpeted floor.  
CG: shivering in fear and adoration, i touch my unworthy lips to your gleaming boots.  
CA: i kick ya in the face like the piece a shit you are  
CG: the force of your kick jerks me backwards, and i fall ungracefully.  
CG: i cower upon the floor, knowing myself unworthy.  
CA: stop squirming ya worthless piece a fish excrement and call me up some coddang whale fillet if youre not too incompetent for even THAT  
CG: i cower even further on the floor and sob.  
CG: i cannot milord.  
CG: i have no money.  
CA: oh for fucks SAKE  
CA: what do ya lowbloods even do with your money what you never ever have any of it  
CA: like flippin seriously  
CA: look i told ya to stop squirmin  
CA: STOP SQUIRMIN YA WIGGLER  
CA: i feel sorry for ya and imma gonna teach your ignorant overspendin ass how ta save up  
CG: i tremble harder in fear and awe.  
CG: i perk up. it appears no more punishment is forthcoming.  
CG: i look up to my lord in gladness, for finally i will be relieved of my struggle.  
CG: finally a superior and smarter member of society will reveal to me the secret of economics.  
CG: oh thank you my lord.  
CG: thank you so much.  
CG: my eyes well up with tears.  
CA: now ya just being embarrassin kiddo look  
CA: just heat up some wwater or waterever for this tea here  
CA: cuz members a my class dont take no nasty ass clown soda and i wont have ya doin it in my presence either  
CA: meanwhile imma put on somefin more comfortable than this fiery trenchcoat here its getting stuffy  
CA: now go on get  
CG: i turn to comply with my lords orders, bearing his precious tea.  
CG: my thoracic cage is aglow with the expectation of sharing with one so high such noble drink.  
CG: i heat up water to a boil on my sole pot.  
CA: i hang my trenchcoat on a handy hanger an its burnin up all nice an warm  
CG: i find an uncracked cup i can proffer to my lord.  
CA: whale jolly good thing i remembered ta bring my wardrobifier with me this time i say casually to myself out loud  
CG: lacking upon appropriate tea apparatuses, i gather a small amount of tea leaves into a clean thin cloth and apply it to the boiling water.  
CA: i take my time slowly peeling off the dusty an sweaty uniform i crashed on with an stretch my hot sinewy body in pure carnal relief  
CG: judging in my inexpertness that the tea must be ready, i lay the pot, the unbroken cup, and a smaller and very scuffed other cup on a cracked tray.  
CG: thus armed, i eagerly and innocently return to my lords location.  
CA: what already? i say all surprised like  
CA: pausin in the middle a disrobin my purple briefs  
CA: my hot round asscheeks conveniently turned to the peasants entryway  
CG: i stumble to a stunned stop, my eyes inexorably attracted to the alluring and indecent display.  
CG: my lord! i gasp.  
CG: my chest heaves in surprise.  
CA: be careful with that ya dolt that shits expensive  
CA: i take the shitty tray off your hands and put it on a table over there  
CA: conveniently givin you a premium display a the bulgin trollhood just barely peekin outta my purple briefs  
CG: my eyes stray uncontrollably.   
CG: i cannot help myself.  
CG: oh no! i am aghast at my impropriety.  
CA: so i notice where ya lil peepers are aimed at and im like SMIRK  
CA: i am exactly as smug as i should be   
CG: i take notice of your smirk and my face flushes with my embarrassingly low color.  
CG: i fight my inferior biology, but my already primitive grasp on control slips.  
CG: under my garments, movement is visible...  
CA: i point and laugh really hard like HA HA HA HA HA! and then im like  
CA: what manner a familiarity is that where ya think ya get to ogle what ya cant even have?  
CA: ya dont know ship aboat me  
CG: i cover my face in shame, but still, i dare speak.  
CG: i do know milord.  
CG: i do know who you are.  
CA: ahahaha really? fuckin really? then SAY IT  
CA: WHAT AM I??????  
CA: i say challengingly  
CG: i slowly uncover myself in fear and gather all my courage.  
CG: turning to face my lord head on i speak, shyly.  
CG: you are... you are him.  
CG: high lord snappertail.  
CG: you are him!  
CA: damn right i am  
CG: all have heard of you and your exploits.  
CG: you bring pride to all of trollkind.  
CA: awwww you know how ta flatter ya bettas thats for sure  
CA: i saunter up to the lil peasant sashaying my half-brief-clad hips  
CA: so hey are all those little dirty faces starin out at your hive jealous that i came to be.....,,,.,,..,,. "here"?  
CG: my face warms with pride.  
CG: without a shred of doubt they are milord.  
CA: i glare straight into his face smiling SUPER smug  
CA: are they jealous wishin they got to be the ones oglin my ass in here?  
CG: i gasp, warmed from within by sudden flushed fires spurred on by his blazing stare.  
CG: certainly milord!  
CA: whale...... how jealous would they BE if their grubby lil faces got to be staring into your window at us...... fraternizing the shit outta each otter...... right..... HERE??????  
CG: my thoracic cage quivers with emotion.  
CG: milord! i cry in passion.  
CG: please! milord! honor me. have me. i am yours to do as you see fit!  
CA: i do an evil little chuckle   
CA: not so fast lil peasant...... not so fast  
CA: i walk slowly back to my wardrobifier still standing out there  
CA: my sweaty gleamin spotless skin sparklin under the fire a that blazin trenchcoat  
CG: i stand petrified, breathing in great anticipatory gulps.  
CA: i look back smugly over my shoaulder  
CA: lick a finger all sensually like  
CA: an raise it to a special button  
CA: an press it  
CA: an then  
CA: i put on my robe an wwizard hat

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked caligulasAquarium [CA] \-- 

================>




You lean back and stretch until you feel your back pop. You're feeling more than a little smug; what started as you screwing with a hacker ended as you screwing with a threshecutioner on duty, and that's enough to make any kid feel particularly accomplished. 

You got a threshecutioner to sex-roleplay with you, and it was almost kind of hot. In a "holy shit is this what he thinks goes on in a lowblood's head" kind of way. For once, you ended a conversation without the lingering suspicion that you were the biggest heap of ignorant trash in it.

The night has been officially saved.

You send the archived convo to your peers and push back on your chair with a sudden burst of energy. You're still in your wizard pajamas! _And_ with a humid towel draped on your horns. The salt has gone sandy on your skin. This won't do. Time for a hot luxurious bath, and a fresh change of silk lounging duds. You are officially assigning tonight as a "you" night— that is to say, a "mindlessly devour an entire tube of ice-cream in front of a chatroom" kind of night.

You mean, you can't really do much for either Karkat or Tavros other than offering strategically sound verbal encouragement, so you see no reason to fret unduly. Keeping up with the news will do. 

You tug the towel off your head decisively, and something slides down your head and clacks on the floor when you do. 

It's a beaded coral wristband. You remember it well.

You pick it up in a daze. 

For a few breathless seconds, your mind is a blank. And then they return unbidden: the questions, the doubts, the paranoia—

This was on Feferi's wrist. And then it was on your hair? How. What manner of positioning did this involve? Obviously this means she touched your head with that particular hand. Did you— did you try to headbutt her or something? To go at her with your horns? That sounds almost too stupid to contemplate, no one even attempts to use horns as weapons out of trashy street-fighting action movies, and usually it's the villains at it. They're impractical. They're not sharp enough to gore even when they're pointed and perfectly vertical. They're an evolutionary remnant of unknown purposes. They're— they're—

Do you lose your mind so badly you attempt to attack her in the most savage yet least effective way? This makes no— this makes no—

You sit back down at the computer. You don't know what is going on or how to help it or how to deal with it so there is _no_ reason to fret so you are _not_ going to and you are going to focus on how Tavros is fucking shit up in some way which is something you can actually help with.

Also remembering your thresh-trolling session makes you feel good so _there_.

You are actually pretty successful, for a while. You put the wristband out of your mind, you help Tavros, you heckle Equius, you are heckled a bit as well. But that's when the ruse falls through.

They were just joking about how you were before your madness. You aren't really hurt by that. Maybe you really were that bad. Maybe what you're going through now is a consequence of your carelessness back then. Maybe you're being punished. You don't resent them, even if you resent the memory of those first terrible days and the turmoil you have been through.

You didn't expect Feferi to either, even though, in hindsight, you really should have. After all, she's the one who has been putting up with you, right?

Of course she's been taking notice of your lies, your avoidance. Even just this evening, she had to do battle against this nameless danger within you. And always, you just shrug and admit to no wrongdoing, no sirree, nothing strange or off-putting going on at all.

You're a fucking hypocrite and she rightly explodes on you in chat.

This conversation is going to suck.

================ >




The conversation sucked just as bad as you thought it would, and now she's leaving the safety of Gl'bgolyb's presence to talk face-to-face. 

You're a sodden weepy mess and you haven't even had your bath yet. 

Your life is basically over.


End file.
